LARR 45-3 Final-1

L AT I N A M E R I C A N R E S E A RC H R E V I E W
volume 45 number 3 2010
editor’s foreword 3
Indigenous Language Usage and Maintenance
Patterns among Indigenous People in the Era
of Neoliberal Multiculturalism in Mexico and
Guatemala
hirotoshi yoshioka 5
Our Indians in Our America: Anti-Imperialist
Imperialism and the Construction of Brazilian
Modernity
tracy devine guzmán 35
Reconstructing Indigenous Ethnicities:
The Arapium and Jaraqui Peoples of the
Lower Amazon, Brazil
omaira bolaños 63
Electoral Revolution or Democratic Alternation?
maría victoria murillo, virginia oliveros,
and milan vaishnav 87
The Eagle and the Serpent on the Screen:
The State as Spectacle in Mexican Cinema
daniel chávez 115
Precursors to Femicide: Guatemalan Women
in a Vortex of Violence
david carey jr. and m. gabriela torres 142
research reports and notes

Household Shocks, Child Labor, and Child
Schooling: Evidence from Guatemala
Copyright 2010 william f. vásquez and alok k. bohara 165
by the Latin American
Studies Association Instituciones políticas y políticas públicas en la
International Standard
Serial Number Federación brasileña
US ISSN 0023-8791 fabiano santos and cristiane batista 187
P5331.indb 1 10/15/10 1:52:56 PM

review essays
Mobilizing and Negotiating Meanings:
Studies in the Dynamics of Colonial-Imperial
Transformations in Art, Science, Law,
Historiography, and Identities in the
Ibero-American World, 1500–1800
sara castro-klarén 213
Shifting Realities in Special Period Cuba
archibald r. m. ritter 229
The Transformation of Venezuela
harold a. trinkunas 239
Bolivia in the Era of Evo Morales
jeffery r. webber 248
The Cold War and Its Aftermath in the Americas:
The Search for a Synthetic Interpretation of
U.S. Policy
robert a. pastor and tom long 261
Translated Abstracts 274
Notes on the Contributors 278
Forthcoming in Volume 46, Number 1 282
Editorial and production services for LARR are

provided by the University of Pittsburgh Press.
For information about the Latin American

Studies Association (LASA), LARR, subscription
information, and instructions to authors, please
see inside back page.
P5331.indb 2 10/15/10 1:52:57 PM

EDI TOR’S FOR E WOR D
Open Access to LARR for Latin America
and the Caribbean
Philip Oxhorn
McGill University
On behalf of Latin American Research Review’s Editorial Committee and

the Executive Committee of the Latin American Studies Association, I am
pleased to announce that, beginning with this issue, anyone residing in
Latin America or the Caribbean will be able to access all current and past
LARR issues free of charge through the LASA and LARR Web site. To the
best of our knowledge, we are the first among our peer journals to offer
this service.
The impetus behind this initiative, which was developed in close col-
laboration with LASA Executive Director Milagros Pereyra-Rojas and the
open-access consultant Enrique Mu, came from the 2009 LASA Congress
in Rio de Janeiro. The LARR-sponsored panel “Publishing Your Research”
generated a lively discussion of the value of open-access publications to
promoting the free exchange of knowledge. This is particularly true for
Latin America and the Caribbean, given the scarcity of resources there.
For example, subsequent research showed that only 4 percent of universi-
ties in Latin America and the Caribbean had access to all LARR issues
through their institutional membership to LASA. This very small percent-
age is complemented by the access that 2.4 percent of these institutions
had to back issues of LARR through Project MUSE and the 17.7 percent
that offered their students and faculty the opportunity to purchase indi-
vidual articles from back issues through their participation in JSTOR. In
addition, of course, the slightly more than two thousand LASA members
who resided in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2009 also enjoyed
access to LARR. Nevertheless, it is clear that the vast majority of scholars
in Latin America and the Caribbean simply are excluded from using the
important research published in LARR.
The ideal solution to this problem would be open access for all, al-
lowing any interested person, anywhere in the world, the opportunity
to download articles of interest free of charge. The problem, however, is
cost: who will pay? Although LARR is in a unique situation compared
with similar journals—as it is the flagship journal of LASA and individual
and institutional LASA memberships pay for most of its subscriptions—
Latin American Research Review, Vol. 45, No. 3. © 2010 by the Latin American Studies Association.
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4 Latin American Research Review
open access would still be cost prohibitive. This is because LASA receives
substantial revenues from royalties with Project MUSE, in particular,
and JSTOR. These royalties would disappear with open access. There are
other nonmonetary elements of risk as well. Open-access initiatives are
still very new, and we know little about their potential implications, both
positive and negative. Any such initiative by LARR is also risky, because
LARR would be the first among its peer journals to do so. Restricting open
access to residents of Latin America and the Caribbean should be viewed
as a compromise and a strategic experiment; we are trying to address a
real need at the same time that we are seeking to minimize risks and un-
derstand the larger implications of open access for possible future LARR
initiatives. Although we have tested the feasibility of open access and
have attempted to ensure that it is consistent with the various copyright
and indexing agreements LARR currently has, we will carefully monitor
this going forward.
The new open-access policy is also made possible by another new
policy of the LASA Executive Committee: this issue will be the last that
is automatically mailed to individuals and institutions located in Latin
America and the Caribbean. For several years, we have been aware of the
economic drain that mailing hard-copy issues of LARR to addresses in
Latin America and the Caribbean entails for LASA. The average cost of
printing and mailing LARR to that region is $80 per member, although
individual membership fees for Latin American and Caribbean residents
are between $27 and $53, depending on one’s income level. This means
that LASA effectively loses between $27 and $53 dollars for each of the
more than two thousand members in Latin America and the Caribbean.
This is obviously a substantial amount of funds. The resulting savings
not only will make open access feasible for all of the region but also will
free up more money for the travel fund that subsidizes the participation
at LASA congresses of people living in Latin America and the Caribbean,
as well as other potential special initiatives. Of course, members can still
request that hard copies of issues be mailed to them, provided that they
pay the difference between their membership fees and the actual cost of
printing and mailing the journal.
Open access to scholarly literature is a dream that many people share.
Although we are still far from reaching that dream, by providing open ac-
cess to all of Latin America and the Caribbean, we have taken a big—and
unprecedented—step in realizing it. As this first experiment unfolds, we
will inform LASA’s membership of its progress. We also will continue to
explore new ways to take advantage of information technology to make
LARR accessible to as large an audience as possible at the same time that
we remain committed to maintaining the highest editorial standards.
P5331.indb 4 10/15/10 1:52:57 PM

I N D I G E N O U S L A N G UAG E U S AG E A N D
M A I N T E N A N C E PA T T E R N S A M O N G
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN THE ER A
O F N E O L I B E R A L M U LT I C U LT U R A L I S M
I N M E X I C O A N D G UA T E M A L A
Hirotoshi Yoshioka
University of Texas at Austin
Abstract: In both Mexico and Guatemala, indigenous languages are at risk of extinc-
tion. Because languages influence people’s ways of thinking and help them identify
with particular ethnic groups, indigenous language loss can result in severe problems
that extend well beyond the demise of these languages. Although current multicultural
reforms offer indigenous people unprecedented opportunities, these seemingly positive
changes may actually threaten indigenous languages and cultures. Using the latest
demographic census data, I present how socioeconomic, demographic, and community
factors negatively correlate with indigenous language usage. I contend that indig-
enous language maintenance will become more difficult because neoliberal multi-
culturalism endorses indigenous cultural rights without putting forth other necessary
changes. Establishing effective language preservation strategies requires us to rec-
ognize dangers hidden in the current multicultural agenda, to rigorously ask how
we can destigmatize negative images attached to indigenous cultures, and to combat
centuries-long oppression and discrimination against indigenous groups.
INTRODUCTION
Throughout the world, hundreds of languages that are known to exist

or to have existed are no longer spoken, and the pace of language loss has
accelerated considerably during the past two centuries (Wurm 1991). Mex-
ico and Guatemala are among the countries that face the danger of lan-
guage loss. As a result of the oppression and subordination of indigenous
groups in many parts of Latin America, many indigenous children no lon-
ger learn indigenous languages and speak only the dominant language—
Spanish, in most countries. Therefore, numerous indigenous languages in
the region risk extinction (England 2003; Hale et al. 1992; Hawkins 2005).
Indigenous people’s disadvantaged socioeconomic status and the pres-
sure of assimilation into mestizo or Ladino society have been influen-
tial on indigenous language loss. Hence, the pace of language loss may
change as a result of drastic recent changes in the environment that sur-
rounds indigenous people. During the 1990s, we witnessed the impres-
sive mobilization of indigenous people in Latin America, and today, both
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Mexico and Guatemala actively recognize indigenous cultural rights.

Such changes may lead us to believe that the preservation of indigenous
languages will be successful, at least more so than in the past. Indeed,
England (2003) notes that there has been some success in the promotion
of Guatemalan Mayan languages. However, I argue that indigenous lan-
guage maintenance will become more difficult; ironically, the increased
difficulty partly derives from the recognition of indigenous cultural rights
endorsed by what Hale (2002) calls neoliberal multiculturalism.
In Latin America, the boundary between indigenous and nonindig-
enous has never been static (Wolf 1986) or clear. As a result, what appears
beneficial to indigenous people, including new indigenous cultural rights,
may actually threaten their cultures. This point merits serious attention,
because without a nuanced understanding of what neoliberal multi-
culturalism really offers and endangers, it is impossible to design an ef-
fective language maintenance strategy. Also, understanding the value of
preserving indigenous languages is an essential component of a true and
robust multicultural society, at least in Mexico and Guatemala.
I argue that, in Mexico and Guatemala, preserving indigenous lan-
guages is an important component of indigenous mobilization and is
fundamental to actually protecting their cultural rights. Therefore, a fur-
ther understanding of factors, patterns, and mechanisms that relate to
language loss is essential for combating socioeconomic difficulties and
injustices that indigenous people have faced. However, to my knowledge,
no individual-level statistical analysis of this topic exits. Using the latest
demographic census data from Mexico and Guatemala, I examine the
correlation between indigenous language usage among self-identified in-
digenous people and various socioeconomic and demographic factors. In
addition, I analyze whether indigenous language usage among the chil-
dren of indigenous language speakers differs because of their parents’
socioeconomic backgrounds.
In this work, I aim to demonstrate why opportunities that emerged un-
der multicultural reforms may threaten indigenous languages in Mexico
and Guatemala rather than promote them. On the basis of empirical evi-
dence, I highlight the importance and difficulties of indigenous language
preservation, why effective language maintenance strategies require us
to seriously take into account various socioeconomic and structural fac-
tors, and an understanding of the hidden dangers of multiculturalism for
indigenous cultures.
INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USAGE AS A METHOD OF

COUNTING INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
It is difficult to determine the number of indigenous people with any

single measure. No one measure has satisfied all researchers as a method
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INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USAGE AND MAINTENANCE 7
of counting indigenous people (Ramirez 2006). The methods of counting

indigenous people differ from one country to another in Latin America.
Some countries use the ability to speak an indigenous language, whereas
others take into account an individual’s self-identity or whether a per-
son wears traditional clothes (Hawkins 2005; Layton and Patrinos 2006;
Patrinos 1994). In Latin America, researchers estimate the number of in-
digenous people by one or a combination of the following measures: in-
digenous language usage, self-identification, and residence in indigenous
territories or an area in which indigenous people are geographically con-
centrated (Gonzalez 1994; Layton and Patrinos 2006).
The self-identification and geographic measures have been criticized
on several grounds. For example, the self-identification method may un-
derestimate the number of indigenous people because discrimination and
prejudice may lead individuals to deny any affiliation with this group
(Gonzalez 1994). A person’s self-identification can also change over time
as his or her ethnicity goes through numerous processes of creation, re-
creation, and redefinition (Beck and Mijeski 2000; Gonzalez 1994). For ex-
ample, during the 1980s in the United States, there were people who had
formerly dismissed their Native American heritage but are now starting
to claim it (Nagel 1995; Snipp 1989). Furthermore, identifying second- or
third-generation heritages is impossible for orphans or children of sin-
gle mothers who are unsure of their father’s ethnic identity (Bell 1996).
Similarly, although the geographical location measure avoids the previous
problems related to the self-identification measure, one problem with this
method is the classification of nonindigenous people living in indigenous
areas as indigenous and vice versa.
Language usage has been considered almost an invariable factor in
determining whether a person identifies with one group over another
(Sagarin and Moneymaker 1979). Yet it can also overestimate or un-
derestimate the number of indigenous people. For example, Paraguay
gave up the language measure because of a large number of nonindig-
enous people speaking Guarani (Gonzalez 1994). In contrast, in Mexico,
classification by indigenous language usage significantly reduces the
number of the indigenous population. That is, if an individual speaks
only Spanish, he or she is considered mestizo even if all of his or her
ancestors were indigenous (Kampwirth 2004). Despite these limitations,
indigenous language usage has been regarded as one of the most impor-
tant measures in counting indigenous people in Latin America. The lan-
guage usage measure is particularly useful in the region where there is a
continuum of racial and ethnic categories, at least more than in the United
States where the category “black” supposedly includes anyone with a
known “drop of black blood” (Wade 1997, 14). The category of the mixed-
blood (mestizo in Mexico and Ladino in Guatemala) symbolizes such a
continuum.
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Indeed, in many parts of Latin America, including Mexico, where the

ideology of mestizaje and assimilation took precedence (Mallon 1992), in-
digenous language usage is the best measure to count indigenous people,
because the vast majority of mestizos do have indigenous ancestors. How-
ever, as a result of the decline in the proportion of indigenous language
speakers among indigenous people, we might need to reconsider the ef-
fectiveness of the language usage measure in counting indigenous people.
To understand why the proportion of indigenous language speakers has
decreased and why the pace of language loss has accelerated over the past
few decades (England 2003), it is essential to examine the socioeconomic
and political positions of indigenous groups and the circumstances that
surround them.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES IN MEXICO AND GUATEMALA
According to the 2000 Mexican census, 7.13 percent of Mexico’s popula-

tion is indigenous with respect to the language measure. There are fifty-
six indigenous languages in Mexico, and 90 percent of indigenous lan-
guage speakers reside in the states of Oaxaca, Yucatán, Puebla, Veracruz,
and Chiapas (Gonzalez 1994). The 2002 Guatemalan census indicates that
about 42 percent of Guatemalans are indigenous, a proportion surpassed
in only Bolivia (Layton and Patrinos 2006). The Xinca and the twenty-one
Mayan linguistic groups are regarded as indigenous in Guatemala.
Despite the large difference in the proportion of indigenous people
in the two countries, indigenous people in both Mexico and Guatemala
face many more socioeconomic difficulties than nonindigenous people.
This is also the case in other parts of Latin America. Indigenous peoples’
disadvantaged socioeconomic status in Mexico and Guatemala has con-
tinued for centuries, since the onset of the colonial period. The division
of classes, largely defined by ethnicity, implies that the region has been
multicultural for a long time (Sieder 2002). However, the problems that
indigenous people faced have largely been ignored, and ethnic differ-
ences have not reflected the region’s politics or legal and administrative
arrangements (Hall, Layton, and Shapiro 2006). Rather, the state regarded
such problems as a class-based issue.
Previous studies have shown two main factors that have influenced
indigenous language usage. First, indigenous people’s disadvantaged
socioeconomic status has discouraged indigenous language usage. In
Guatemala, indigenous languages are often associated with the “nega-
tive” values of the “traditional”: ignorance, lack of education, and poverty.
In contrast, people associate the dominant language—Spanish—with the
“positive” values of the “modern” (England 2003). Second, government
authorities have affected indigenous language usage in the two countries.
For example, regarding language diversity as an obstacle to achieve unity,
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in 1911, the Mexican government put the Law for Rudimentary Instruc-
tion in force, which prohibited indigenous children from using their ma-
ternal languages in school (Bravo Ahuja 1992). Historically, bilingual edu-
cation, which has been asymmetrical and unidirectional, has discouraged
indigenous people from learning indigenous languages in both Mexico
and Guatemala (Patthey-Chavez 1994; Richards and Richards 1997; Sali-
nas Pedraza 1997).
Since the 1990s, several events, including the awarding of the 1992 No-
bel Prize to Rigoberta Menchú and the Zapatista revolt against the inau-
guration of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, dramati-
cally changed the environment that surrounds indigenous people. And
the quincentenary celebrations led the world to pay unprecedented atten-
tion to indigenous populations in Latin America. Not only did indigenous
populations attract more attention, they are pressing for rights of theirs
that states did not recognize for a long time. For example, in 1992, the
Mexican government started to acknowledge the existence of indigenous
communities in the national legislation through the reform of Article 4
of the Mexican Constitution for the first time since the end of Spanish
colonialism (Kampwirth 2004; Salinas Pedraza 1997). Similarly, the Gua-
temalan government signed the 1995 Accord on the Identity and Rights of
Indigenous Peoples, promising to take measures to recognize and com-
pensate indigenous people (England 2003; Jonas 2000).1
Despite these remarkable changes, inequalities between indigenous
and nonindigenous populations have persisted in Latin America dur-
ing the Indigenous Peoples’ Decade from 1994 to 2004 (Hall et al. 2006).
Hale (2002) has attempted to explain this paradoxical phenomenon using
the concept of neoliberal multiculturalism. The author argues that multi-
culturalism took place in Latin America “in the general context of neolib-
eral political and economic reforms” (Hale 2002, 493). And multicultural
reforms affirm new rights without resolving socioeconomic inequalities
(Hamel 1994). Because indigenous people in both Mexico and Guatemala
belong to the poorest group, despite the recognition of indigenous cul-
tural rights, they continue to face socioeconomic hardships. Therefore, a
chance to achieve upward socioeconomic mobility for most indigenous
people is small because of the high level of inequality in income and ac-
cess to needed services that segregates citizens by their social class (Rob-
erts 2005).
However, the state’s attitude toward indigenous people and the disad-
vantaged socioeconomic status of indigenous groups alone are insufficient
to explain the accelerated rate of language loss in Mexico and Guatemala,
because the relationship between indigenous and nonindigenous groups
1. However, the accords, including the idea of either officialization or co-officialization of

indigenous Mayan languages, were turned down in May 1999 (England 2003; Jonas 2000).
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has always been unequal. Besides, unlike in the past, bilingual education
today in the two countries emphasizes the importance of ethnic diversity
(Patthey-Chavez 1994; Richards and Richards 1997). Therefore, a close ex-
amination of both micro- and macrofactors is essential to understand the
accelerated language loss rate. It is also necessary to explain why multi-
cultural reforms can threaten indigenous languages.
NEOLIBERAL MULTICULTURALISM AND INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USAGE
One reason many indigenous people have maintained their languages

until today despite the strong pressure of castellanización and great socio-
economic discrepancies between indigenous and nonindigenous groups
is that there were few opportunities for indigenous people. As a result,
little incentive existed for them to learn Spanish (Garzon 1998a; Richards
2003). This is especially the case in Guatemala, where bilingual education
started much later than in Mexico (Hall et al. 2006) and lacked an official
discourse of mestizaje (Hale 2002), which led indigenous groups to con-
sider Spanish the outsider’s language.
Multicultural reforms have drastically changed some of these condi-
tions. I contend that the recent accelerated rate of language loss in both
Mexico and Guatemala is attributable to new opportunities that emerged
under multicultural reforms and related consequences, especially rural-
urban migration and both quantitative and qualitative changes in con-
tact between indigenous and nonindigenous groups. For example, today’s
broader coverage of bilingual education has helped indigenous children
perform better in school, and more indigenous people hold professional
positions today. We must welcome such new opportunities and socio-
economic advancement of indigenous people. However, it is also essential
to realize that under today’s neoliberal multiculturalism, unless accom-
panied by necessary structural changes, these opportunities can also be
perilous for indigenous cultures.
Indigenous children do not learn indigenous languages today because
many parents believe that it is more useful to teach their children Spanish
rather than their native languages. Such a belief often derives from their
own traumatic experiences as a result of their inability to speak Spanish
well at school (Brown 1998; England 1996). In other words, Spanish is con-
sidered a power symbol of the mainstream society (Hill and Hill 1980).
Therefore, indigenous children learn Spanish in the context of a serious
sociocultural inequality (Lewin 1986). Although today’s multicultural re-
forms certainly help some indigenous people overcome hardships and be-
come included in mainstream society, the changes that seem apparently
beneficial to indigenous people can be detrimental to their cultures. For
instance, with respect to Guatemalan Mayan groups, Garzon (1998a) states
that an indigenous population’s integration into mestizo or Ladino society
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has often resulted in the internalization of negative images attached to in-

digenous groups among indigenous people themselves.
Higher educational attainment also leads many indigenous people
to leave their communities for larger cities. Rural-urban migration dis-
courages indigenous language use in two ways, which are related to
each other. First, the proportion of indigenous language speakers is
much lower in urban areas than in rural areas, which reinforces people’s
learning of Spanish and offers fewer occasions to practice indigenous
languages. Therefore, indigenous people who leave their communities
permanently “may feel little need to assert their ethnic identity” (Garzon
1998a, 198). Second, those who migrate to urban areas usually have higher
socioeconomic status than people who remain in rural areas. Because we
usually interact with others of similar socioeconomic backgrounds, in-
digenous language speakers in urban areas tend to have more frequent
contact with mestizos or Ladinos. This point merits close attention, be-
cause it reflects a qualitative change in contact between indigenous and
nonindigenous groups, as this contact often takes place without a clear
hierarchy.
I argue that indigenous people who are in frequent contact with mes-
tizos or Ladinos in a more egalitarian manner face a greater risk of los-
ing indigenous languages because, even though the state argues for the
importance of ethnic diversity and respect, indigenous people continue
to face hostility and derision from the dominant mestizo or Ladino group
(Garzon 1998a), both explicitly and implicitly. As a result, some indige-
nous people prefer to abandon their ethnic identity and assimilate into
the mainstream mestizo or Ladino culture. Because they tend to speak
Spanish well and have other means, such as formal education, it is easier
for them to abandon their indigenous languages (Garzon 1998a).
The new type of interethnic relationship may also induce a tension
between indigenous and nonindigenous groups. The increased contact
among ethnic groups leads not only indigenous but also nonindigenous
people to rethink ethnic hierarchies and relations in a society. For eco-
nomically less advantaged nonindigenous groups, who are most likely to
interact with indigenous groups in their daily life, such interactions may
lead to the perception of abandonment among nonindigenous groups.2
An additional problem of multicultural reforms today are the calls for
equality in the existence of severe socioeconomic inequality, which also
makes the protection of indigenous cultures more difficult. The rejection
of the constitutional reforms in Guatemala reflects such a difficulty (Mon-
tejo 2002).
2. According to the latest census data from Mexico and Guatemala, poor, nonindigenous
households are more likely to live in municipalities with a greater proportion of indigenous
households. The results of those statistical models are available on request.
P5331.indb 11 10/15/10 1:52:59 PM

Without resolving fundamental social problems and rectifying past

injustices, bilingual education and the emerging opportunities not only
discourage indigenous people from practicing their languages but also
lead to stronger oppositions toward indigenous language preservation
both from nonindigenous and from indigenous groups. It is my conten-
tion that, rather than protecting indigenous rights and cultures, multi-
culturalist reforms lead to a vicious cycle of language loss. As I discuss
here, indigenous language loss can result in severe problems that extend
well beyond the demise of languages, including the disappearance of in-
digenous cultures, thus endangering even the most basic premise of multi-
culturalism. Hence, preserving and promoting indigenous languages and
understanding how socioeconomic and demographic factors relate to in-
digenous language usage patterns are very important.
DATA AND METHODS
To examine indigenous language usage patterns in Mexico and Gua-

temala, I used the latest nationally representative demographic census
data of Mexico (2000) and Guatemala (2002). The Instituto Nacional de
Estadística y Geografía (INEGI) in Mexico and the Instituto Nacional de
Estadística (INE) in Guatemala, respectively, collected the census data.
The Mexican census data are a 10 percent sample, and I used the sam-
pling weight provided in the data set; the Guatemalan census data are
100 percent data (i.e., the data set contains all households interviewed).
The censuses counted indigenous people by indigenous language usage
and by respondents’ self-identification. The Guatemalan census data pre-
sent information about a person’s maternal language, and if respondents
spoke more than one language, the census asked them to name up to two
nonmaternal languages. In contrast, the Mexican census asks directly
whether a respondent speaks an indigenous language and whether a per-
son speaks Spanish.
The current analysis has two parts. First, I examine the correlation be-
tween socioeconomic and community characteristics and indigenous lan-
guage usage among self-identified indigenous people. The purpose of the
first part is to examine whether, among those who identify themselves
as indigenous, indigenous language usage is related to socioeconomic
background. In the second part, I analyze how indigenous language us-
age among children of indigenous language speakers differs by their par-
ents’ and households’ socioeconomic status and whether the household
head’s spouse speaks an indigenous language. In the second part, I limit
my sample to children between the ages of six and eighteen whose house-
hold head speaks an indigenous language and for which the spouse of the
household head was present in the household at the time of the census. I
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exclude those children whose household heads were not married because
the most recent census data in these countries do not provide any infor-
mation on a person’s ex-spouse.
The unit of analysis in the first part is individuals who identify them-
selves as indigenous, and in the second part, it is the children of indig-
enous language speakers. In both parts of the analysis, I use multinomial
logistic regression models in which I regress the use of indigenous lan-
guages (0 if a respondent does not speak an indigenous language, 1 if he
or she speaks only indigenous languages, and 2 if the respondent speaks
both Spanish and indigenous languages) on three explanatory variables
(household asset index, individual’s level of education, and migration sta-
tus) and several sociodemographic factors, including respondent’s sex,
urban-rural status, and the proportion of people in a municipality who
speak indigenous languages. As the dependent variable indicates, I divide
indigenous language speakers into two groups (i.e., monolingual and bi-
lingual with Spanish) to closely examine whether independent variables
considered in this study relate differently to indigenous language use on
the basis of whether people use indigenous languages as their only lan-
guage. I used principal component analysis to construct the asset index
for households based on households’ access to or ownership of several
resources, such as electricity, running water, and primary cooking fuel. I
used this asset index as a proxy for household wealth. Because the Gua-
temalan census does not provide any information on income, to make the
study of indigenous language usage comparable between Mexico and
Guatemala, taking into account household wealth it is the most appropri-
ate option for this study.3
I clustered the data set according to municipalities in which respon-
dents lived to obtain robust standard errors, because a person’s place of
residence may influence indigenous language usage. As noted, I also took
into account households’ migration. I defined migration in this study as
whether a person’s current residence of state (Mexico) or department (Gua-
temala) differed between the time the census was taken and five (Mexico)
or six (Guatemala) years prior to it. Therefore, I could not measure tempo-
rary migratory movements such as seasonal migration using the census
data. Hence, with the current data, I could not estimate the correlation be-
tween temporary migratory movements that took place during five or six
years before the census was taken and indigenous language usage, and
it was necessary to take into account this limitation when explaining the
correlation between this variable and indigenous language usage.
3. A list of the variables used to calculate the asset index is available on request. For more
information on the construction and validity of the asset index and principal component
analysis, see Filmer and Pritchett (2001).
P5331.indb 13 10/15/10 1:53:00 PM

A major limitation of this study is that, although I argue that we must

not see indigenous groups as one group, I do not differentiate between
indigenous groups in statistical models. I decided to aggregate indigenous
groups in this study, because the number of speakers for most indigenous
languages in the two countries is not large, and therefore estimating
statistical models is not feasible. It is possible that treating indigenous
languages as one language in this study overestimates the risk of lan-
guage loss for those languages with a large number of speakers, such as
K’iche’ in Guatemala but underestimates the risk for languages that fewer
people speak. Therefore, the results of the study need to be viewed with
caution.
In this study, I test the following four hypotheses:
H1: Indigenous people with a higher level of education, higher wealth index,
and who live in urban areas are less likely to speak indigenous languages
especially as their only languages. People with a higher socioeconomic sta-
tus and those who live in urban areas are more likely to interact with non-
indigenous people, and they need to speak Spanish more often than people
living in rural areas. The interaction with nonindigenous people may also
lead indigenous people to think that speaking Spanish is more important
and useful than speaking indigenous languages. Furthermore, indigenous
people in urban areas encounter few opportunities to learn and practice
indigenous languages.
H2: The children of household heads who have recently migrated are less
likely to speak indigenous languages as their only languages. Indigenous
people are more likely to engage in agricultural work, and those who en-
gage in agricultural work are, in general, less likely to migrate permanently.
Therefore, migrant households have more contacts with nonindigenous
language speakers and the children of migrant households tend to learn in-
digenous languages less, which I argue is especially the case if households
migrate when a child is very young.
H3: The children of indigenous language speakers with a higher socioeco-
nomic status are less likely to speak the indigenous language. Relating to
the first two hypotheses, people with a higher level of socioeconomic back-
ground tend to live in urban areas and have nonagricultural occupations.
Moreover, parents with a higher level of education may prefer to speak with
their children in Spanish rather than in indigenous languages. Children
living in urban areas are more likely to receive Spanish-only instruction
at their schools, thus limiting their need to speak the indigenous language.
H4: The degree of correlation between a household’s socioeconomic back-
ground and a child’s indigenous language usage is lower when a model
takes into account the household head’s spouse’s indigenous language us-
age. Because people tend to marry a person of a similar socioeconomic and
cultural background, it is probable that indigenous language speakers with
a high socioeconomic status are less likely to marry indigenous language
P5331.indb 14 10/15/10 1:53:00 PM

speakers if there is a negative correlation between socioeconomic status

and indigenous language usage.
INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USAGE AMONG SELF -IDENTIFIED

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for Mexican and Guatemalan

people who identify themselves as indigenous. More than half of Mexican
indigenous people live in small communities with fewer than 2,500 inhab-
itants (50.9 percent). They also tend to concentrate in municipalities where
at least half the population speaks an indigenous language (43.58 percent).
At the same time, about 31 percent of people live in municipalities where
fewer than 5 percent of inhabitants speak indigenous languages, which is
in part due to a small proportion of indigenous people in Mexico. About
58 percent of self-identified indigenous people speak an indigenous lan-
guage in Mexico. In my sample, about 11 percent of self-identified indig-
enous people in Mexico speak only indigenous languages. The asset in-
dex indicates economic hardships that Mexican indigenous people face.
Almost 75 percent of Mexican indigenous people belong to the poorest
40 percent of the Mexican national population.
The demographic characteristics of Guatemalan indigenous people are
similar to those of Mexican indigenous people. Only about 37 percent of
indigenous people live in urban areas, as defined by the Guatemalan gov-
ernment. In addition, similar to their Mexican counterparts, Guatemalan
indigenous people also face tough economic situations. About 64 percent
of indigenous people account for the poorest 40 percent of the Guatema-
lan population. The proportion of indigenous people who are in the poor-
est 40 percent group is lower in Guatemala in part because the proportion
of indigenous people is much greater in Guatemala than in Mexico.
A major difference between Mexican and Guatemalan self-identified
indigenous people is that Guatemala’s indigenous people are more concen-
trated in communities where most people speak an indigenous language.
Almost 83 percent of self-identified indigenous people in Guatemala live
in municipalities where at least 50 percent of people speak indigenous lan-
guages. In addition, almost 40 percent of Guatemalan indigenous people
have received less than primary education. Because the age distribution
in the two countries is quite similar, we can infer that indigenous people
in Guatemala receive fewer years of formal education than Mexican in-
digenous people. Finally, self-identified indigenous people in Guatemala
(80 percent) are more likely to speak indigenous languages than are their
Mexican counterparts, and a much greater percentage of indigenous peo-
ple in Guatemala, compared to Mexico, speak only indigenous languages
(28.63 percent).
P5331.indb 15 10/15/10 1:53:01 PM

Table 1 Percentage Distribution of Self-Identified Indigenous People Aged 6 and Older
by Selected Characteristics, Mexico (2000) and Guatemala (2002)
Variable Percentage
Mexico Guatemala
Lives in urban area — 36.80
Locality size
Less than 2,500 50.90 —
2,500–14,999 19.82 —
More than 15,000 29.27 —
Percentage of indigenous language
speakers in municipality
Less than 5% 31.36 1.29
5.00–19.99% 11.64 8.63
20.00–49.99% 13.43 7.22
More than 50.00% 43.58 82.87
Female 50.41 51.42
Age
15 and younger 30.26 29.77
15–29 30.57 33.68
30–44 19.49 18.45
45–59 11.38 10.83
60 and older 8.30 7.27
Indigenous language
Do not speak indigenous language 41.87 19.95
Speak only indigenous language 10.85 28.63
Speak both indigenous language and Spanish 47.28 51.42
Education
None or less than primary 18.16 39.98
Primary 56.97 50.80
Secondary 21.91 8.40
Postsecondary 2.96 0.82
Migrated 3.93 2.22
Asset index
40% lowest 74.69 63.82
40% middle 18.06 30.58
20% highest 7.24 5.60
Note: N = 971,074 (Mexico); N = 2,927,568 (Guatemala). Mexican data are weighted. Data
from 2000 Mexican Census; 2002 Guatemalan Census.
P5331.indb 16 10/15/10 1:53:01 PM

Table 2 presents the results from multinomial logistic regression mod-

els. Model 1 includes individual and household characteristics. The model
shows that most individual characteristics are significantly correlated with
the use of indigenous languages in both Mexico and Guatemala, except for
respondents’ ages among Guatemalans who speak only indigenous lan-
guages. For example, people age fifteen and older are significantly more
likely to speak indigenous languages than individuals who are from the
ages of six to fourteen in both Mexico and Guatemala. However, such a
difference does not exist between those younger than fifteen years and
people between the ages of fifteen and twenty-nine among Mexican in-
digenous people who speak only indigenous languages.
In addition, a person’s level of education is negatively correlated to
indigenous language usage, which is especially true among those who
speak only indigenous languages in both countries. For example, in Mex-
ico, the probability of speaking only indigenous languages among people
with postsecondary education is only about 0.4 percent of that among
people with less than primary education. Similarly, in Guatemala, people
with a higher level of education are significantly less likely to speak an
indigenous language, taking into account other individual characteristics.
Although the negative correlation between the level of education and in-
digenous language usage also exists among bilingual people, the differ-
ence is not as substantive as among those people who speak only indig-
enous languages. At the same time, the fact that the level of education
is, in general, negatively correlated with the use of indigenous languages
reflects the difficult task of preserving indigenous languages because in
both Mexico and Guatemala, children tend to receive more years of educa-
tion today than in the past.
In both countries, members of a household with a higher asset index are
also significantly less likely to speak indigenous languages either as their
only languages or when they also speak Spanish. The negative correlation
between a household’s economic status and its members’ indigenous lan-
guage use is especially strong among those who speak only indigenous
languages. For example, the probability of speaking only indigenous lan-
guages among those from the richest 20 percent of households is less than
1 percent of that among people from the poorest 40 percent of households
in Mexico. Similarly, in Guatemala, richer household members are espe-
cially less likely to speak only indigenous languages than are those in
poor households.
The model also shows that, though women are significantly more likely
to be indigenous monolingual speakers, they are less likely to be bilin-
gual than men in both Mexico and Guatemala. This is probably because
men face more occasions, such as jobs, that require them to speak both
Spanish and indigenous languages. Because indigenous women are more
likely to have less extensive networks, they are more likely than men to
P5331.indb 17 10/15/10 1:53:01 PM

P5331.indb 18
Table 2 Relative Risk Ratios from Multinomial Logistic Regression Predicting the Indigenous Language Usage
Mexico Guatemala
Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous
Only and Spanish Only and Spanish Only and Spanish Only and Spanish
0.478 *** 0.762 *
Lives in urban area
Locality size
(Less than 2,500)
2,500–14,999 0.445 ** 0.659 ***
More than 15,000 0.365 *** 0.966
Percentage of
indigenous
language speakers
in municipality
(Less than 5%)
5.00–19.99% 6.613 *** 4.807 *** 0.687 0.858
20.00–49.99% 17.865 *** 10.679 *** 0.352 ** 0.841
More than 50.00% 305.604 *** 55.199 *** 11.968 *** 4.882 ***
Female 1.451 *** 0.841 *** 1.524 *** 0.864 *** 1.199 *** 0.911 *** 1.235 *** 0.925 ***
Age
(15 and younger)
15–29 1.047 2.184 *** 1.341 *** 2.811 *** 1.031 1.643 *** 1.116 * 1.783 ***
10/15/10 1:53:01 PM
P5331.indb 19
30–44 1.311 *** 2.669 *** 2.345 *** 4.483 *** 0.953 2.001 *** 1.158 ** 2.392 ***
45–59 1.650 *** 3.008 *** 3.085 *** 5.112 *** 1.021 2.150 *** 1.312 *** 2.692 ***
Older than 60 1.780 *** 2.810 *** 3.934 *** 5.203 *** 1.105 2.044 *** 1.557 *** 2.709 ***
Education
(None or less
than primary)
Primary 0.192 *** 1.087 * 0.143 *** 0.891 ** 0.187 *** 0.990 0.171 *** 0.935
Secondary 0.007 *** 0.573 *** 0.005 *** 0.451 *** 0.060 *** 0.649 *** 0.056 *** 0.598 ***
Postsecondary 0.004 *** 0.777 ** 0.002 *** 0.452 *** 0.076 *** 0.534 *** 0.078 *** 0.529 ***
Migrated 0.336 *** 0.857 1.662 ** 2.370 *** 0.458 *** 0.930 1.744 *** 2.149 ***
Asset index
(40% lowest)
40% middle 0.015 *** 0.110 *** 0.119 *** 0.349 *** 0.195 *** 0.528 *** 0.273 *** 0.620 ***
20% highest 0.006 *** 0.061 *** 0.163 *** 0.349 *** 0.076 *** 0.270 *** 0.207 *** 0.460 ***
Constant 1.357 ** 1.323 *** 0.033 *** 0.120 *** 6.316 *** 2.760 *** 0.943 0.853
Log-likelihood –731,758.5 –558,441.2 –2,609,128.8 –2,422,133.4
χ2 10,434.06 *** 10,864.81 *** 10,864.81 *** 10,864.81 ***
N 971,074 971,074 2,927,568 2,927,568
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001
10/15/10 1:53:02 PM
speak only indigenous languages. Finally, in this model, I found that mi-
gration experience during the past five (Mexico) or six (Guatemala) years
before the census was taken is significantly negatively correlated with
indigenous language use among indigenous monolingual speakers in
both countries.
In Model 2, in addition to the individual characteristics considered in
Model 1, I included two community characteristics: urban-rural status
and an indigenous language prevalence rate at the municipality level.
Taking into account the community characteristics, generational differ-
ences in indigenous language usage are greater in Mexico than in Gua-
temala for both indigenous language monolingual speakers and those
who also speak Spanish. For example, although people age fifteen and
older in Mexico are 1.3 times (age fifteen to twenty-nine) to 4 times (age
forty-five to fifty-nine) more likely to speak only indigenous languages
than are children from the ages of six to fourteen, people ages fifteen and
older in Guatemala are only about 1.1 (age fifteen to twenty-nine) to 1.6
(people age sixty and older) times more likely to speak only indigenous
languages than are children between the ages of six and fourteen. Hence,
the model indicates that Mexican indigenous people are abandoning in-
digenous languages at a more rapid pace than are Guatemalan indig-
enous people.
In Mexico, respondents living in larger towns and cities are significantly
less likely to speak only indigenous languages than those in smaller com-
munities. For example, people living in municipalities with at least 15,000
people are only about 37 percent as likely as those living in communities
with fewer than 2,500 people to speak only indigenous languages. Simi-
larly, in Guatemala, those living in urban areas are only about 48 percent
as likely as those living in rural areas to speak only indigenous languages.
Among people who speak both indigenous languages and Spanish, the
difference in the probability of speaking indigenous languages by the
locality size also exists, although it is not as large. Although the model
does not show any significant difference in indigenous language usage
between people who reside in communities with fewer than 2,500 people
and those with at least 15,000 people among those who speak both Span-
ish and indigenous languages, this is because people who are less likely
to speak indigenous languages (e.g., those with higher levels of educa-
tion and economically more advantaged) tend to concentrate in larger
municipalities.4
In both Mexico and Guatemala, people living in municipalities with a
higher percentage of indigenous language speakers are significantly more
likely to speak indigenous languages. The correlation is especially strong
4. Indeed, without considering other factors, people living in larger communities are
significantly less likely to speak indigenous languages.
P5331.indb 20 10/15/10 1:53:02 PM

and significant among those who speak only indigenous languages. For
example, the probability of people living in municipalities where more
than half of people are indigenous language speakers to speak only indig-
enous languages is more than 305 times that of among those who live in
municipalities where fewer than 5 percent of inhabitants speak indigenous
languages. Similar patterns can also be found in Guatemala, although the
difference in indigenous language usage by indigenous language preva-
lence rates is much greater in Mexico than in Guatemala. This is because
indigenous people with higher education and better economic status are
in Mexico more likely to live in municipalities with fewer indigenous lan-
guage speakers than are indigenous people with similar socioeconomic
backgrounds in Guatemala.
An interesting finding is the correlation between recent migration and
indigenous language usage. Controlling for both individual and commu-
nity characteristics, I found that recent migration is positively correlated
to indigenous language usage in both Mexico and Guatemala. The differ-
ence is statistically significant in both countries and is present regardless
of whether people speak indigenous languages as their only languages or
in addition to Spanish. In Mexico, the probability of speaking only indig-
enous languages among people who migrated during the past five years is
about 1.6 times higher than that among those who did not, and in Guate-
mala, recent migrants are about 1.74 times more likely than nonmigrants
to speak indigenous languages as their only languages. This is most likely
because in Model 2, I control for both individual and community charac-
teristics. The data sets show that, in both countries, people are more likely
to migrate to larger communities with a lower proportion of indigenous
language speakers.
Overall, in both Mexico and Guatemala, I have found that people
with higher socioeconomic status are less likely to speak indigenous lan-
guages. The results are similar in both Mexico and Guatemala, indicating
that among indigenous people in the two countries, whether indigenous
people speak indigenous languages is significantly correlated with their
socioeconomic status and the environment that surrounds them.
INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE SPEAKERS AND THEIR CHILDREN’S LANGUAGE USAGE
Table 3 presents descriptive statistics for both the Mexican and Guate-
malan samples used in the analysis of language maintenance among chil-
dren of indigenous language speakers. About 53 percent of children aged
six to eighteen whose household heads speak an indigenous language can
also speak it in Mexico, whereas in Guatemala, about 83 percent of chil-
dren do the same. In Mexico, fewer than 10 percent of children of indig-
enous language speakers speak only indigenous languages, whereas the
percentage is much higher among Guatemalan children (31.16 percent).
P5331.indb 21 10/15/10 1:53:02 PM

Table 3 Percentage Distribution of Children Aged 6–18 of Household Head Who Speaks
Indigenous Language by Selected Characteristics, Mexico (2000) and Guatemala (2002)
Variable Percentage
Mexico Guatemala
Lives in urban area — 32.14
Locality size
Less than 2,500 56.76 —
2,500–14,999 20.49 —
More than 15,000 22.75 —
Percentage of indigenous language speaker
in municipality
Less than 5% 17.18 1.14
5.00–19.99% 16.22 5.99
20.00–49.99% 17.67 4.93
More than 50.00% 48.93 87.94
Age of household head
20–29 5.31 4.26
30–44 56.96 55.35
45–59 32.21 34.05
60 and older 5.52 6.33
Education of household head
Primary 62.37 47.97
Secondary 13.32 4.86
Migrant household 2.60 1.87
Household head’s language
Speaks only indigenous language 7.59 26.24
Speaks indigenous language and Spanish 92.41 73.76
Spouse’s language
Spouse does not speak indigenous language 21.45 6.84
Spouse speaks only indigenous language 18.13 43.68
Spouse speaks indigenous language and Spanish 60.42 49.48
Child’s language
Child does not speak indigenous language 47.17 17.30
Child speaks only indigenous language 9.43 31.16
Child speaks indigenous language and Spanish 43.39 51.54
Education of household head’s spouse
Primary 56.97 25.73
(continued)
P5331.indb 22 10/15/10 1:53:02 PM

Table 3 (continued)
Variable Percentage
Mexico Guatemala
Secondary 9.97 2.36
Asset index
40% lowest 85.62 68.24
40% middle 11.85 27.72
20% highest 2.53 4.04
Child’s age (mean) 11.64 11.96
Note: N = 290,615 (Mexico); N = 842,530 (Guatemala). Data from 2000 Mexican Census;
2002 Guatemalan Census. Mexican data are weighted.
This is in part because, though about 92 percent of heads of children’s

households in my Mexican sample speak both indigenous languages
and Spanish, only about 74 percent of their Guatemalan counterparts do.
Therefore, indigenous languages are more likely to be languages spoken
in households in Guatemala than in Mexico. The table also shows that
Guatemalan children tend to receive fewer years of education than their
Mexican counterparts.
A notable difference between the children in the two countries is that,
whereas 21.5 percent of spouses of indigenous language speakers do not
speak indigenous languages in Mexico, the vast majority of Guatema-
lan indigenous speakers have spouses who do. Only about 7 percent of
spouses of indigenous language speakers do not speak it themselves in
Guatemala. This is in part because finding a person who speaks an indig-
enous language is much more difficult in Mexico, where the proportion of
indigenous people in the country is smaller. Note also that, as is the case
among heads of households, spouses of indigenous language speakers in
Guatemala are much more likely to be monolingual in indigenous lan-
guages (43.68 percent) than their counterparts in Mexico.
Table 4 shows the results from multinomial logistic regression mod-
els predicting children’s probability of speaking indigenous languages
either as their only languages or along with Spanish. Model 1 includes
all variables except for spouse’s characteristics. The model indicates that,
in both countries, children in households with high socioeconomic sta-
tus are less likely to speak indigenous languages, which is true whether
or not they speak these languages as their only languages. For example,
household heads’ education is significantly, negatively correlated with in-
digenous language usage among their children. In addition, the negative
correlation is stronger among those children who speak only indigenous
P5331.indb 23 10/15/10 1:53:03 PM

Table 4 Relative Risk Ratios from Multinomial Logistic Regression Indigenous Language Usage among Children of Indigenous
Language Speakers
P5331.indb 24
Mexico Guatemala
Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2
Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous

Only and Spanish Only and Spanish Only and Spanish Only and Spanish
Lives in urban area 0.415 *** 0.618 *** 0.464 *** 0.644 ***
Locality size
(Less than 2,500)
2,500–14,999 0.425 * 0.612 *** 0.406 *** 0.567 ***
More than 15,000 0.072 *** 0.324 *** 0.074 *** 0.275 ***
Percentage of
indigenous language
speaker in municipality
(Less than 5%)
5.00–19.99% 2.072 * 1.078 1.345 0.841 1.374 1.193 0.937 0.849
20.00–49.99% 4.042 *** 2.302 *** 2.252 * 1.503 1.278 1.793 * 0.834 1.153
More than 50.00% 58.365 *** 11.943 *** 19.054 *** 6.199 *** 19.904 *** 7.961 *** 5.463 *** 3.412 ***
Female 0.420 *** 0.852 0.882 0.982 0.480 *** 0.732 *** 1.069 1.045
Age
(20–29)
30–44 0.630 *** 0.831 ** 0.477 *** 0.747 *** 0.707 *** 0.890 ** 0.567 *** 0.821 ***
45–59 0.380 *** 0.665 *** 0.216 *** 0.532 *** 0.558 *** 0.756 *** 0.374 *** 0.635 ***
60 and older 0.263 *** 0.541 *** 0.143 *** 0.412 *** 0.378 *** 0.576 *** 0.274 *** 0.518 ***
Education
(None or less than
primary)
Primary 0.599 *** 0.708 *** 0.814 * 0.878 * 0.538 *** 0.641 *** 0.654 *** 0.733 ***
Secondary 0.206 *** 0.429 *** 0.515 *** 0.712 *** 0.231 *** 0.360 *** 0.455 *** 0.570 ***
Postsecondary 0.045 *** 0.369 *** 0.254 *** 0.746 * 0.145 *** 0.301 *** 0.449 *** 0.657 ***
10/15/10 1:53:03 PM
Migrated 0.617 0.961 0.725 0.954 1.519 1.847 ** 1.386 1.585 *
Head speaks indigenous
P5331.indb 25
language and Spanish 0.068 *** 0.315 *** 0.167 *** 0.428 *** 0.066 *** 0.582 *** 0.220 *** 0.975
Spouse’s language
(Does not speak
indigenous language)
Speaks only indigenous
language 1752.722 *** 87.177 *** 581.565 *** 148.677 ***
Speaks indigenous
language and Spanish 49.910 *** 18.016 *** 18.853 *** 32.763 ***
Education of head’s
spouse
(None or less than
primary)
Primary 1.005 0.799 *** 0.807 ** 0.797 ***
Secondary 0.515 *** 0.680 *** 0.466 *** 0.566 ***
Postsecondary 0.157 *** 0.665 * 0.558 * 0.528 **
Asset index
(40% lowest)
40% middle 0.096 *** 0.409 *** 0.202 *** 0.560 *** 0.236 *** 0.526 *** 0.301 *** 0.574 ***
20% highest 0.134 ** 0.422 *** 0.256 0.840 0.095 *** 0.267 *** 0.166 *** 0.330 ***
Child’s age 0.815 *** 1.055 *** 0.784 *** 1.049 *** 0.901 *** 1.064 *** 0.873 *** 1.055 ***
Migration × urban 0.746 0.628 1.015 0.843
Migration × locality
size 2,500–14,999 1.195 0.795 1.387 0.827
Migration × locality
size more than 15,000 6.701 * 2.312 ** 4.136 * 2.230 **
Constant 6.682 *** 1.159 0.125 *** 0.115 *** 18.579 *** 1.272 0.692 0.065 ***
Log-likelihood –193,826.0 –164,045.6 –642,712.1 –543,401.6
χ2 6,091.3 *** 12,980.7 *** 8,773.3 *** 20,257.9 ***
N 296,150 296,150 842,530 842,530
*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001
10/15/10 1:53:03 PM
languages than it is among bilingual children. Similarly, the asset index

is also negatively correlated with the probability of children speaking in-
digenous languages, and the negative correlation is stronger among in-
digenous monolingual children. Besides, Model 1 indicates that the nega-
tive correlation is especially strong among children in Mexico because the
proportion of indigenous language speakers in Mexico is much smaller
than in Guatemala.
The table also presents that children living in urban areas are signifi-
cantly less likely to speak indigenous languages in both Mexico and Gua-
temala, and this is especially the case among children who speak only
indigenous languages. This makes sense because children face more occa-
sions that require them to speak in Spanish in urban areas. In addition, in
the case of Mexico, those living in municipalities with a high proportion
of indigenous language speakers are significantly more likely to speak
indigenous languages, especially as their only languages. Note that this
correlation is significant in Guatemala only for those living in municipali-
ties where at least half of inhabitants are indigenous language speakers
among Guatemalan children who are monolingual in indigenous lan-
guages. Overall, the positive correlation between the indigenous language
prevalence rate at a municipality level and children’s indigenous language
use is stronger in Mexico than in Guatemala, which is most likely because
indigenous people are more likely to concentrate in particular areas in
Mexico than in Guatemala.
Also, controlling for other factors, there is no significant correlation be-
tween a child’s migration experience and indigenous language use among
Mexican children. This is probably because I controlled for community
characteristics, and migrants are more likely to reside in larger communi-
ties with a lower proportion of indigenous language speakers. Indeed,
the interaction terms between migration and the community size show
that children of migrant households living in a community with at least
fifteen thousand inhabitants are 6.7 times more likely to be monolingual
in indigenous languages and 2.3 times more likely to be bilingual than
other children.
In the case of Guatemala, Model 1 shows that migration experience
is significantly correlated with children’s indigenous language usage
among bilingual children. Children of recently migrated households are
more than 1.8 times more likely to speak both Spanish and indigenous
languages than are those children who did not recently migrate. Besides,
the interaction term between migration and urban-rural status indicates
that, though children who recently migrated and live in urban areas are
significantly less likely to speak an indigenous language as their only lan-
guages, they are more likely to speak it along with Spanish.
Finally, Model 1 also considers household heads’ use of Spanish. The
model shows that when a head of household speaks Spanish in addition
P5331.indb 26 10/15/10 1:53:03 PM

to the indigenous language, his or her children are much less likely to
speak an indigenous language in both Mexico and Guatemala. Therefore,
we can infer that when people speak Spanish, they are less likely to teach
their children to speak indigenous languages, which indicates the diffi-
culty of preserving indigenous languages among younger generations.
In addition to the covariates included in Model 1, Model 2 includes
spouses’ characteristics. Although most covariates found to be statisti-
cally significant in Model 1 remain significant in this model, their sub-
stantive correlations with indigenous language use are not as strong in
this model as in Model 1. Therefore, the model indicates that a spouse’s
characteristics are also important factors in predicting children’s indig-
enous language use. Indeed, household heads’ spouses’ ability to speak
an indigenous language is most strongly related to children’s indigenous
language usage. In both countries, the probability of children speaking
only an indigenous language is significantly greater (1,753 times more in
Mexico and 582 times in Guatemala) than for children of households in
which spouses of household heads do not speak indigenous languages.
Similarly, among those children who speak both indigenous languages
and Spanish, whether or not household heads’ spouses speak indigenous
languages is an important factor in predicting children’s use of indige-
nous languages.
The fact that a spouse’s characteristics are most strongly correlated with
children’s indigenous languages indicates a few things. First, because
people tend to marry those from similar socioeconomic backgrounds,
children of economically advantaged households are much less likely to
speak indigenous languages. This trend may lead to a further differen-
tiation in socioeconomic status between indigenous language speakers
and nonspeakers. Furthermore, a very strong and significantly positive
correlation between a spouse’s indigenous language use and that of their
children shows that it is very difficult to maintain an indigenous language
even when one of the parents speaks it. In most cases, both parents need
to speak an indigenous language to ensure that their children also speak
it. Because such cases are not very common today, especially in Mexico,
to preserve indigenous languages, it is imperative that children encounter
opportunities to learn and practice indigenous languages outside their
households, such as in bilingual education.
CONCLUSIONS
The current study has examined statistical correlations between vari-

ous socioeconomic, demographic and community characteristics, and
indigenous language usage among self-identified indigenous people in
Mexico and Guatemala. The analysis supported three of my hypotheses
(H1, H3, and H4). Among those who self-identify as indigenous, those liv-
P5331.indb 27 10/15/10 1:53:03 PM

ing in urban areas, with a higher socioeconomic status, are significantly

less likely to speak indigenous languages. Similarly, the children of in-
digenous speakers with a higher socioeconomic status are less likely to
speak indigenous languages in both countries. It is important to note that,
in the first part of the analysis, my sample is limited to those people who
identify themselves as indigenous. Hence, although there is no way to
identify those who are indigenous but do not identify themselves as such,
it is probable that the negative correlation between various socioeconomic
factors and indigenous language usage is even stronger.
Contrary to my second hypothesis, I have found that there is no nega-
tive correlation between migration and indigenous language use. How-
ever, migration is partially correlated with indigenous language usage
in both Mexico and Guatemala: those in Mexico who live in large com-
munities and have recently migrated are more likely to speak indigenous
languages whether or not they are bilingual. Similarly, in Guatemala, chil-
dren in migrant households are more likely to speak both Spanish and
indigenous languages than are nonmigrant children. Because people who
migrate to urban areas tend to be socioeconomically better off than those
who remain in rural areas, we should be concerned that socioeconomic
differences between indigenous language speakers and nonspeakers may
increase and that indigenous languages may further be seen negatively.
Indigenous people in the two countries have suffered from severe
socioeconomic status and discrimination for centuries. This situation has
continued until today. What distinguishes the present situation from the
past one are various opportunities that have become available to indig-
enous people but have not resolved fundamental structural problems.
This change resulted in a continuing but different type of pressure of
assimilation. In the past, the pressure to assimilate came from the state
through the discourse of mestizaje and bilingual education. Today, the
state in both countries officially encourages ethnic diversity and cul-
tural rights. Indigenous children remain in school for a longer period of
time in both Mexico and Guatemala, and some indigenous people have
achieved socioeconomic upward mobility. At the same time, as this study
indicates, such socioeconomic advancements also threaten indigenous
languages. This is because, as Garzon (1998a) indicates, the diversity of
settings in which the indigenous and nonindigenous interact today leads
many young indigenous people to accept a nonindigenous attitude.
Such an attitude usually entails negative images of indigenous cultures.
Given the finding that socioeconomically advantaged indigenous peo-
ple are more likely to abandon indigenous languages and possibly also
cultures, it is probable that a further negative image will be attached to
indigenous cultures and people. Hence, as Sonntag (2003) argues, the
rights-based approach to support for linguistic diversity does not work
because, rather than combat conditions it opposes—such as the pressure
P5331.indb 28 10/15/10 1:53:04 PM

of mestizaje and assimilation in the case of Mexico and Guatemala—it can

reproduce them.
Consistent with both my quantitative findings and Garzon’s (1998a) ar-
gument, in my fieldwork in the western highlands of Guatemala, I have
noticed that people who have achieved socioeconomic success hold a more
nuanced understanding of inequality between indigenous and nonindig-
enous groups. That is, instead of finding that current indigenous people’s
situations are mainly caused by discrepancies in educational attainment,
which is often the case among older generations, educated young indig-
enous people tend to acknowledge that the barrier is difficult to surpass
even if they have acquired a high level of education. Understanding this
subtle but extremely hard-to-break barrier often drives indigenous people
to abandon their affiliation. Therefore, taking the steps to improve cur-
rent situations that indigenous people face, as Montejo (2002) proposed
with reference to the Guatemalan Mayan—that indigenous movements
must put an end to the century of silence and that indigenous people must
take pride in their cultures—is extremely difficult in both Guatemala and
Mexico.
Moreover, the decreasing proportion of indigenous language speak-
ers in both Mexico and Guatemala means that young indigenous people
today, especially those with higher socioeconomic status, are more likely
to marry nonindigenous language speakers or bilingual people. The sta-
tistical analysis has shown that marriages between indigenous language
speakers and those who speak Spanish greatly reduce the probability that
the children will speak indigenous languages. This finding reflects that,
though subordinate groups tend to be bilingual, members of dominant
groups do not learn languages of the subordinate groups (Garzon 1998b).
The acquisition of Spanish is almost ensured among indigenous children
because it gives them easier access to opportunities outside of their com-
munities (Aubague 1986). Therefore, although indigenous parents may
believe that their children will naturally learn indigenous languages even
if Spanish is used in their households, that is usually not the case, at least
in today’s Mexico and Guatemala. This is why preserving indigenous lan-
guages will be more difficult even in the presence of some successes, as
reported in England (2003).
Nevertheless, I contend that we must make the effort to preserve and
promote indigenous languages. This may sound paradoxical given the
findings of the statistical analyses, and the preservation of indigenous
language itself is a contested discourse. However, I argue that, to achieve
a multicultural society in Mexico and Guatemala, preserving indigenous
language is fundamental, as languages influence people’s thinking and
help them identify with particular ethnic and linguistic groups. There-
fore, languages reflect the worldviews of ethnic groups and are the prin-
cipal means to transmit such worldviews and cultural practices (England
P5331.indb 29 10/15/10 1:53:04 PM

2003; Watson 2006; Wurm 1991). In fact, indigenous languages are just
one important component of indigenous cultures. Hence, language loss
can also lead to more profound and problematic changes. For example,
language loss can lead people—both nonindigenous and indigenous—to
consider various indigenous cultures, such as their customs, religion, and
languages, as one culture, which is not true: indigenous cultures are very
diverse. Modiano (1988) has stated that, although indigenous people in
Mexico are geographically concentrated, the indigenous people are so
diverse in terms of their languages and culture that it is impossible to
characterize the indigenous population as one ethnic group, except that
they are overwhelmingly rural and poor. Although at the moment Mo-
diano’s argument seems right because of the large number of indigenous
languages that exist in the two countries, and because language is a very
important aspect of many indigenous cultures and the most widespread
symbol of self-identity (Fischer 2001), its loss may finally lead various
indigenous cultures to become one culture, which might not be “indig-
enous” at all anymore.
Makoni and Pennycook (2007) have stated that languages are socially
constructed and that definitions of language have material consequences
for people. I argue that in societies in which boundaries among ethnic
groups are not very clear, including Mexico and Guatemala, concepts of
ethnicity and languages are closely related (Fishman 1989); therefore, such
material consequences can have a significant impact on ethnic groups and
their cultures. In fact, as Fishman (1989) claims, ethnicity is as modifi-
able and manipulable as other human characteristics such as religion and
ideology. The difficulty of defining indigenous groups in Latin America
reflects this fact. This is why preserving indigenous languages is an ex-
tremely important issue in Mexico and Guatemala. And the robustness of
indigenous languages seems to correlate with that of indigenous cultures.
Indeed, Lewin (1986) argued that the reduction in minority languages’ ca-
pacity for social communication as a result of the use of Spanish in many
communal spaces, which is the case for both Mexico and Guatemala, co-
incides with the deterioration of cultural reproductive ability and that of
communicative languages. Hence, as Hamel (1995) has contended, the
survival of indigenous languages in Mexico and Guatemala is a decisive
factor for the nature of the two countries: multicultural or homogenous.
Today’s challenge to preserve indigenous languages is heightened
because more and more people live in urban areas. Bilingual education
needs to be implemented not only in rural areas where a large number of
indigenous people reside but also in urban areas where many nonindig-
enous people live. Nonindigenous people who send their children into
bilingual education are most likely to resist bilingual education for at least
two reasons. First, they will resist because of the low prestige of indig-
enous languages and the stigma attached to indigenous cultures. Second,
P5331.indb 30 10/15/10 1:53:05 PM

as discussed previously, nonindigenous people who are most likely to in-

teract with indigenous people are those who are economically disadvan-
taged and who are most likely to feel abandoned by the state because of
neoliberal multicultural reforms and threatened by the rise of indigenous
activism. If current multicultural reforms cannot destigmatize indigenous
cultures and decrease tensions between ethnic groups, the reforms can-
not reinforce indigenous language usage. Rather, such reforms can dis-
courage people from using indigenous languages.
England (2003) argues that linguistics alone cannot ensure language
retention. The current study has indicated that granting cultural rights is
not sufficient to ensure the maintenance of indigenous languages either.
And cultural rights cannot be ensured unless other rights, such as socio-
economic and political rights, are also actively granted. This is because
today’s multicultural reforms reflect what Riding (1985) noted more than
twenty years ago about Mexico, which I argue is also applicable to Gua-
temala. That is, although the two countries seem to be proud of their in-
digenous pasts, they are ashamed of their indigenous present. And I must
add that not only are mestizos and Latinos ashamed of the indigenous
present; some indigenous people are also ashamed.
I contend that the goal of today’s indigenous language preservation
must be to help people speak both indigenous languages and Spanish and
to ensure that they are included in societies rather than that they speak
only indigenous languages and are economically marginalized. There-
fore, teaching only indigenous languages, which Haviland (1982) sug-
gested almost three decades ago, is not a viable option today. Similarly,
discussing Guatemalan Mayan indigenous groups, Brown (1996, 167)
stated that, “since the Spanish invasion, the survival of [indigenous cul-
tures] has often depended on the successful mastery of Spanish cultural
elements, including language, as an addition to, but not a replacement
for, [indigenous] culture.” Given the diversity of indigenous languages in
both Mexico and Guatemala, the acquisition of Spanish is an important
step for pan-ethnic movements such as pan-Mayan movements, which
Montejo (2002) believes to be necessary to legitimize cultural projects of
revitalization.
The inclusion of indigenous people through destigmatization of in-
digenous cultures, including their languages, cannot be achieved un-
less serious problems such as the high level of inequality and tensions
among ethnic groups are resolved. Today’s indigenous language pres-
ervation programs also require support from nonindigenous groups—
without their supports, language preservation programs will not work.
Therefore, language preservation programs must be planned simultane-
ously with improvement in both indigenous and nonindigenous peoples’
socioeconomic, political, and cultural status. Such a plan must include the
reconstruction and disinvention of indigenous languages (Makoni and
P5331.indb 31 10/15/10 1:53:05 PM

Pennycook 2007), which entail a rigorous analysis of processes through

which today’s indigenous languages have been constructed and classified
and have led to the current low status of indigenous languages. Hence,
the establishing of effective and valid language preservation strategies
also needs to take into account poverty and the difficulties that many
indigenous people continue to face today and to rectify past injustices.
Therefore, such strategies must seriously consider how indigenous cul-
tural rights can actually be protected and promoted.
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P5331.indb 34 10/15/10 1:53:06 PM

OUR INDIANS IN OUR AMER ICA
Anti-Imperialist Imperialism and the
Construction of Brazilian Modernity
Tracy Devine Guzmán

University of Miami
Abstract: Indigenous peoples have been used and imagined as guardians of the
Brazilian frontier since at least the mid-nineteenth century. This association was
central to the foundation of the Indian Protection Service (Serviço de Proteção
aos Índios, or SPI) during the early 1900s and culminated with the Amazonian
Vigilance System (Sistema de Vigelância da Amazônia, or SIVAM) at the turn of
the millennium. Throughout the period, the abiding desire to establish defensive do-
minion over disputed national territory subjected individuals and groups identified
as “Indians” to the power of overlapping discourses of scientific progress, national
security, and economic development. A trinity of Brazilian modernity, these goals
interpellated native peoples primarily through the practice and rhetoric of education,
which grounds their historical relationship with dominant national society. Draw-
ing on SPI records, government documents, journalism, personal testimonies, and
visual media, this article traces the impact of this modernist trinity on indigenist
policy and in the lives of those who have been affected by its tutelary power. By
transforming private indigenous spaces into public domain, Brazil’s politics of anti-
imperialist imperialism propagated a colonialist, metonymic relationship between
“our Indians” and “our America” into the twenty-first century.
FORMER INTERNATIONAL RESERVE OF AMAZON FOREST
The image in figure 1 has been circulating as part of an Internet chain

letter since the year 2000. Alleged to be an excerpt from a geography book
used in U.S. middle schools, it outlines the Amazon on a map of Brazil
and neighboring countries. The text explains in poor English that the
“most important rainforest in the world” has been seized from the “il-
literate” and “primitive” peoples of South America, appropriated for safe-
keeping by the United States and the United Nations, and renamed the
Former International Reserve of Amazon Forest (FINRAF). The supposed
author, neoconqueror David Norman, justifies the confiscation of national
My thanks to Bianca Premo, Bill Smith, Edilene Payayá, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Jan Hoff-
man French, George Yúdice, Juvenal Payayá, Marc Brudzinski, Kate Ramsey, Sônia Ronca-
dor, faculty and students of the Faculdade 2 de Julho, the Atlantic Studies Working Group
at the University of Miami, and the three anonymous LARR reviewers for their comments
and suggestions on previous versions of this work.
P5331.indb 35 10/15/10 1:53:06 PM

Figure 1 “An Introduction to Geography.”
territory from the “irresponsible, cruel and authoritary [sic] countries” of

Latin America by urging protection of the “world’s lungs” and referring
to the rainforest as patrimony “of all humanity.”1 Titled “A Amazônia é
nossa!” this anonymous e-mail message led Internet users throughout
the Americas to believe that U.S. schoolchildren have indeed been study-
ing the “necessary” takeover of Brazilian territory and its conversion to
1. The Normans conquered territories from Hastings to Syria between the eleventh and
the early thirteenth centuries. The historian David Nicolle (1987, 4) associates them with
military prowess, ruthlessness, “business sense,” and “appreciation for money.”
P5331.indb 36 10/15/10 1:53:07 PM

OUR INDIANS IN OUR AMERICA 37
FINRAF. Between 2000 and 2005, the bogus e-mail persuaded so many
people that the U.S. State Department (2005) and the Brazilian Embassy in
Washington were compelled to post disclaimers on their respective Web
sites attesting to the falseness of its allegations.2
As have other perceived infringements of national sovereignty, spurious
or otherwise, FINRAF draws on a telluric anti-imperialism that pervades
dominant Brazilian culture and has associated the country’s interior with
the heart and soul of Brazilianness since long before the declaration of the
First Republic, in 1889. From nineteenth-century Indianist fiction (Treece
2000) to twentieth-century Amerindian symphonies (Béhague 2006) and
political cartoons “commemorating” Brazil’s colonization at the turn of
the millennium (Bundas 2000a, 2000b; Devine Guzmán 2005), the Amazon
and its inhabitants appear repeatedly in national cultural production as
a patriotic trope to represent the whole or imagined essence of the coun-
try. In policy initiatives and the popular imaginary alike, patriotic re-
sponses to looming violations of territorial sovereignty—like FINRAF—
have triggered the preemptive takeover of “virgin” Amazonian lands
that are deemed lacking of state occupation, control, and ownership.3 But
of course, the original “owners” of these territories have “occupied” and
“controlled” them for thousands of years.
Here I consider these Amazonian imaginaries, the ongoing processes
of Brazilian modernity, and anti-imperialist articulations of national iden-
tity in relation to those whose fate has been implicated in all three sets of
discourse: “the Indians,” real and imagined.4 I argue that the imperialist
logic of rightful possession reflected in the bogus geography textbook is,
paradoxically, analogous to the Brazilian state’s own historical rationale
of interior occupation and border defense.5 This discourse dates to the
2. Ambassador Rubens Antônio Barbosa attributed the fabrication to retired military

personnel and the anonymous Web site Brasil, Ame-o ou Deixe-o (a slogan associated with
the 1964–1985 dictatorship). Paulo Roberto de Almeida (minister-counselor of the Brazilian
embassy in Washington) documented the circulation of the rumor in Brazil by university
professors and members of Congress, in addition to countless outraged citizens. Having
condemned the uncritical embrace of the message and its accompanying ultranationalist
discourse by the same intellectual left that had once opposed the military dictatorship,
Almeida was charged by both sides with support for U.S imperialism (see http://www
.pralmeida.org).
3. Consider, for example, the imagery of sexual possession used in popular media re-
sponses to George W. Bush’s October 2000 suggestion that third-world debt be traded for
valuable rain-forest lands (Bundas 2000a, 2000b).
4. I acknowledge here the constructed nature of “Indianness” and the difficulty of relay-
ing its complexity in language and through translation (on this, see Ramos 1998, 13–59). In
general, I use the terms Indian and Indianness to invoke ideas and images and indigenous
and indigeneity to evoke people and lived experience. These referents, of course, sometimes
overlap.
5. By invoking the state, I refer primarily to the institutions, organizations, and policies
that interpellate indigenous peoples inside national borders.
P5331.indb 37 10/15/10 1:53:11 PM

mid-nineteenth century, when transportation and communication tech-

nologies first opened up the hinterlands and the Terena and Guaicuru
peoples were conscripted as scouts and spies in the National Guard dur-
ing the Paraguayan War (1864–1870) (Berthold 1922; Ferreira Vargas 2003;
Summerhill 2003; Taunay 1923, 1931; Marcos Terena, personal communi-
cation with the author). Notwithstanding the anti-imperialist sentiment
behind the Internet letter, the logic of the fictitious FINRAF initiative in
fact echoes a century of Brazilian indigenism—also an anti-imperialist
doctrine, but one that sits at the opposite end of the political spectrum and
has been implemented precisely through the realm of education or tute-
lary power (Souza Lima 1995). It is therefore ironic that the masterminds
of FINRAF and the fake book sought to rouse anti-imperialist sentiment
by inventing an educational discourse positing all Brazilians as “primi-
tive” beings in need of “civilized” guidance and enlightenment. This is
what much of dominant Brazilian society has been saying about the na-
tive peoples of the Amazon for nearly two centuries.
Both indigenist discourse and the invented international plot to take
over the Amazon invoke the role of indigenous peoples in the processes
of Brazilian modernity by positing the superiority of “modern” knowl-
edge and reason over “backward” tradition and myth to impose new and
specific configurations of time and space. Though touted as “objective”
and “scientific,” this temporal and spatial reorganization presents a colo-
nialist rendering of the physical world under the guise of universal truth
and in the name of “all humanity.” In both cases, “superior” cultures are
meant to supplant “inferior” ones by bringing with them what Anthony
Giddens (1990, 18) called the “consequences of modernity,” which foster
relations between peoples, institutions, and ideas that in premodern times
may have never crossed paths. Thus was the thrust of Brazil’s indigenist
enterprise, which—like the fictitious FINRAF takeover—was meant to re-
configure “primitive” places both through tutelage (protection) and posi-
tive images of that tutelage.
The goals of educating “underdeveloped,” “illiterate,” and “primitive”
peoples and equipping them with books, technology, and weapons to
safeguard national territory stemmed from national development policy
beginning in the early twentieth century. The push to modernize the in-
terior manifested as the Marcha Para o Oeste of President Getúlio Vargas
during the 1930s and 1940s and the Cinqüenta Anos em Cinco initiative
of President Juscelino Kubitschek, culminating in the inauguration of Bra-
zil’s hypermodern capital (Brasília) in 1960.6 In the midst of this develop-
ment flurry, Vargas’s vice president, João Café Filho, charged a committee
6. Although the “Marcha” began officially in 1940, the push westward was marked by
the founding of Goiânia in 1933 and the establishment of the Departamento Nacional de
Estradas de Rodagem (DNER) at the outset of the Estado Novo.
P5331.indb 38 10/15/10 1:53:11 PM

of “indigenist experts” with a feasibility study for a new indigenous re-

serve in the then-unified state of Mato Grosso: the Parque Indígena do
Xingu (PIX).7 The committee concluded that Xingu would facilitate the
protection of the nation’s “indigenous factor” in “human, animal, and
plant forms” and emphasized the value of fusing technological, security,
and economic interests with the state’s indigenist mission:
[U]ma vez assistido de forma adequada [o índio] encontraria seu lugar na socie-
dade brasileira. . . . No PIX, a F.A.B. [Força Aérea Brasileira] e a navegação aérea
comercial . . . teria[m] um ponto de apoio da maior importância estratégica e de
grande relevância para a segurança do vôo. Os trabalhadores científicos ganha-
riam a segurança de uma reserva do Brasil prístino onde poderiam . . . continuar
contribuindo para um conhecimento mais profundo de nossa terra e nossa gente.
E a nossa geração se redimiria das espoliações que em nosso tempo, se vêm fa-
zendo à natureza brasileira, reservando um recanto onde ela se conservaria into-
cada [sic].8 (“Ante-Projeto de Lei” 1952)
Equipped with landing strips and radiotelegraph stations, the Xingu
reserve pushed the nineteenth-century association between indigenous
protection and the militarized takeover of native lands into the second
half of the twentieth century. This postindependence desire for defen-
sive dominion over the prized but “empty” landscape (Pratt 1992, 61)
thus relegated its native peoples to human capital to be exploited in
the interest of technological progress, national security, and economic
development. A trinity of Brazilian modernity, these overlapping goals
would interpellate “Indians” primarily through education—a rhetoric
and practice of anti-imperialist imperialism that I argue grounds the
entire historical relationship between indigenous peoples and dominant
Brazilian society.9
Although indigenous peoples have become increasingly empowered
to represent themselves in politics and through various forms of cultural
production,10 the colonialist tendencies to “vanish” them into nature (Berry
7. These officials included the indigenist functionary Raimundo Vasconcelos Aboim; the
National Museum director Heloisa Alberto Tôrres; the sertanista Orlando Villas Boas; and
the ethnologist Darcy Ribeiro. For a history of PIX (now Terra Indígena do Xingu), see Gar-
field 2004; Pires Menenzes 2000.
8. I have maintained the original spelling and accentuation of primary sources.
9. Early “indigenous education” adhered to nineteenth-century norms, which man-
dated that rural schooling be technical rather than academic (Romanelli 1999, 45). Regional
intellectuals and nation builders considered “educação para o ócio” to be detrimental to
national development (Romanelli 1999, 44). The Peruvian González Prada (1946, 212), for
example, railed famously in his 1904 essay, “Nuestros Indios” against “cerebros con luz y
estómagos sin pan.”
10. See, for example, the Instituto Indígena Brasileiro para Propiedade Intelectual (http://
www.inbrapi.org.br); the Vídeo nas Aldeias project (http://www.videonasaldeias.org.br);
the indigenous teacher-training program of the Ministry of Education of Bahia (http://
www.sec.ba.gov.br/aplicativos/noticia.asp?acao=5&noticia_id=541); and Ramos’s collab-
orative work on “Indigenizing Development” (Poverty in Focus 2009, 305). In contrast, there
P5331.indb 39 10/15/10 1:53:11 PM

1960) or subordinate their agency to the idealized imaginings of “hyper-

real” Indians (Ramos 1994) have not abated. The nationalist critique of im-
perialism represented by the FINRAF facade is, in fact, still premised on
an imagined but powerful metonymic relationship between “our Indians”
and “our America.”11 Simply put, the idea of Indians (and not indigenous
peoples) is used to stand in for a subaltern Brazil and vice versa. In what
follows, I trace the influence of these modernizing discourses (science, se-
curity, and development) on the rhetoric and practice of indigenism and
in the thought of people interpellated by it—indigenous and nonindig-
enous alike. My aim is not to re-create the indigenist (or indigenous) past
but to show how imperialist discourses—real and imagined, foreign and
domestic—have used the idea, practice, and image of indigenous educa-
tion to reconfigure traditional notions of time and space as part of the
construction of Brazilian modernity. Under the guise of protection, these
discourses in fact facilitated exploitation by helping transform the Ama-
zon from a traditional “place” into a modern “space” (Giddens 1990).
FROM PIX TO SIVAM: WHO IS DEFENDING WHOM?
The seeds of indigenist modernity planted during the early twenti-

eth century would flower decades later as the Sistema de Vigelância da
Amazônia (SIVAM), characterized by its Brazilian and U.S. infrastructure
providers as the largest environmental monitoring program and largest
law enforcement system in the world” (Grupo Schahin 2002; Raytheon
2009).12 A massive configuration of surveillance radars, environmental
sensors, airborne systems, and on-ground coordination centers, SIVAM
was the technological infrastructure for monitoring 5.2 million square
kilometers of Amazonian rainforest (Raytheon 2000). The Brazilian Air
Force and the U.S.-based Raytheon Corporation, which won the contract in
an international bid to provide the Brazilian government with hardware
and technological expertise, developed the project between 1994 and 2005
with the collaboration of Brazilian companies Embraer and ATECH. With
a price tag of US$1.395 billion, SIVAM was initiated during the administra-
tion of Fernando Henrique Cardoso but was borne of a Vargas-era desire
to control Brazilian airspace, which intensified under military rule in the
1970s and early 1980s (Bonalume Neto 2005; Departamento de Controle
is at present no indigenous representation in the national congress, and a self-identifying

indigenous person has never led the state’s indigenist bodies.
11. I refer to José Martí’s 1891 anti-imperialist manifesto of pan–Latin Americanism,
“Nuestra América.”
12. SIVAM was the infrastructure-implementation phase of what is now the Amazonian
Protection System (Sistema de Proteção da Amazônia, or SIPAM). The transfer took place in
April 2006. See http://www.sipam.gov.br/.
P5331.indb 40 10/15/10 1:53:12 PM

do Espaço Aéreo [DECEA]).13 As allegations of corruption surrounded its

thorny passage through Congress for approval of international financing,
the project brought scandal to Cardoso’s government that led to an of-
ficial investigation (Comissão Parlamentar de Inquérito, or CPI) and the
dismissal of four top officials.14
Shadowed by this controversy, SIVAM advocates pitched the project to
the general public as a means to protect valuable and endangered national
territories. Their rationale justified this effort at protection with language
that, perhaps not coincidentally, resonates with the fake textbook’s justifi-
cation of FINRAF. Thus read the governmental Web site:
Na década de 80, a Amazônia era considerada o pulmão do mundo, e nós, bra-
sileiros, os incendiários que estavam acabando com o oxigênio do planeta. Os
outros países, de olho em nossas riquezas, diziam-se preocupados com a saúde da
Terra e queriam dar palpite em tudo que acontecia na Amazônia. Naquela época,
existiam na região rotas de tráfico de drogas, ocupação desordenada, invasão de
áreas indígenas, contrabando, ações predatórias . . . e a ocorrência de uma série de
outros crimes. Na verdade, com as dificuldades de comunicação e de controle da
região, ficava difícil para o governo brasileiro saber a real situação da Amazônia.
(Comissão para Coordenação do Projeto do Sistema de Vigilância da Amazônia
[hereafter Comissão], 2006b)
The assertion that SIVAM might deter countries with their “eyes on
Brazilian wealth” was contradictory, however, considering that foreign
sources financed 97 percent of the initiative. Earning 8.5 percent interest
on nearly $1.4 billion in loans over two decades, the “other countries” in
question would in fact manage to accumulate massive amounts of Brazil-
ian “riches” with the approval of the Brazilian Congress.15
Although there have been a handful of studies addressing the techno-
logical aspects of SIVAM and its significance as part of a regional history
of military and environmental defense, scant attention has been paid to
the social and cultural implications of the project. I was therefore drawn
to the educational campaign used to promote SIVAM between 1997 and
13. Brazilian territory is divided into four integrated air-traffic-control and air-defense
centers (centros integrados de defesa aérea e controle de tráfego aéreo, or CINDACTAs). The
area CINDACTA I (Brasília, Rio, São Paulo, and Belo Horizonte) dates to 1973. The area
CINDACTA IV covers the Amazon and began functioning with SIVAM technology and
infrastructure in 2006 (DECEA).
14. Chief of Protocol Júlio César Gomes; Air Force Minister Brigadier General Mauro
Gandra; head of the Federal Police’s Operations Center, Mário Oliveira; and director of the
National Institute for Colonization and Agrarian Reform (INCRA), Francisco Grazziano.
The judicial body that oversees public financing (Tribunal de Contas da União) concluded
that the contracts in the case were legal, whereas the CPI found evidence of bribery and
“influence trafficking” (Taylor and Buranelli 2007, 73–74; see also NotiSur 1995; Ramos 1998,
240–241).
15. The governmental Web site documented financing as follows: U.S. Export-Import
Bank, 73.3 percent; Raytheon, 17 percent; Exportkreditnämnden, 6 percent; and Vendor’s
Trust, 3.4 percent.
P5331.indb 41 10/15/10 1:53:12 PM

2000 as part of a communications operation to improve public opinion

regarding what had come to be known in the mainstream press as “o pro-
jeto dos escândalos” (Lima 1998, 5). Brainchild of the SIVAM project coor-
dinator Brigadeiro Marcos Antônio Oliveira, the pedagogical undertaking
originated in Rio de Janeiro with members of the Social Communications
Advisory Team, who decided to represent the government’s technological
security initiative with a cartoon image (figure 2) of an Indian boy they
called “little SIVAM” (Lima, interview with the author, August 8, 2008,
Rio de Janeiro). The promotional materials explained: “Esse indiozinho
simpático é o Sivamzinho, o mascote do projeto SIVAM. Ele é o amigo
número um das crianças da Amazônia” (Comissão, 2006d). A light-
skinned, monolingual Portuguese speaker sporting shorts, a T-shirt, and
a Yanomami-looking haircut, the “nice little Indian” was the centerpiece
of 1,028,000 pieces of pedagogical material distributed to schoolchildren
and teachers throughout the region, including twenty-three locales tar-
geted as installation cites for SIVAM infrastructure (Lima 1998, 17).16
The 115 tons of notebooks, posters, calendars, rulers, and pencils—all
showcasing the SIVAM mascot—aimed “to generate a legion of Sivam-
zinhos” throughout the Amazon who would identify with the “little In-
dian’s” “spirit of adventure” and “love of the land” (Lima 1998, 14–17; see
also Comissão 2006e). Part environmentalist and part spy, Sivamzinho
was also the protagonist of a series of educational comics that depicted
him protecting the rainforest, advocating for sustainable development,
and turning over wrongdoers to the federal police. In two such comics,
“O garimpo que não deu certo” and “Estão levando os animais,” he
caught smugglers as they sifted protected gold and trafficked protected
animals deep in the heart of the rainforest. Other editions showed Si-
vamzinho preventing deforestation, river pollution, and improper fish-
ing practices, and praising the enhanced production levels and quality
of life brought about by SIVAM technology (Comissão 2006d). With an
emphasis on individual and communal responsibility in policing the
hinterlands, Sivamzinho served as the metaphorical eyes and ears of the
state and a poster child (literally) for a century of “indigenous protec-
tion.” He was the “educated Indian”: authentic (enough) in his abilities
and interests but sufficiently whitened by the knowledge he had gleaned
from dominant society and sought, in turn, to impart to his less-enlight-
ened brethren. Above all, Sivamzinho was a patriot who embraced the
responsibilities of national citizenship. Five hundred thousand “educa-
tional notebooks” circulated through Amazonian schools depicted him
hoisting the Brazilian flag and singing the national anthem (Comissão
2006a).
16. For a list of the sites, see Comissão 2006c.
P5331.indb 42 10/15/10 1:53:12 PM

Figure 2 Sivamzinho “Educational Notebook.” Courtesy of Filipe Bastos.
P5331.indb 43 10/15/10 1:53:12 PM

As a human symbol of SIVAM and mouthpiece for the national inter-

ests it was supposed to represent, Sivamzinho put a positive spin on a
complex international initiative that the public had reduced to the eter-
nally popular idea that foreigners were taking over the Amazon (Lima
1998; O Carnaval 2009; Rohter 2002).17 At the same time, the “mascot” re-
flected the colonialist tendency to put expedient words in the mouths of
silenced others and to place an Indian face on the aspirations of dominant
society—all in the purported best interest of the Indians themselves.18
Although the pedagogical materials were popular in the impoverished
schools where they were distributed, SIVAM’s critics contended that in-
vestment in small-scale infrastructure and human services might have
better served the local population. As the priest Nilton César de Paula
from São Gabriel da Cachoeira argued, “Se o Sivam vai trazer satélites,
que traga também radiofonia e telefonia de qualidade. Nas comunidades
do Rio Negro, muitas pessoas morrem de picada de cobra só porque não
contam com um telefone para pedir socorro” (Medeiros 1998, 46).
SHOWCASING NEW BRAZILIAN PATRIOTS
Despite the futuristic nature of the SIVAM initiative, the conflation of

Indian education with national development and the technological mili-
tarization of indigenous lands is an old phenomenon. By placing soldiers,
science, and “desirable” settlers into frontier regions during the early
1900s, the young republic had been forced to confront its most “imagined”
constituents (Anderson 1991) in the native peoples who lived there and
who were deemed ignorant of their own Brazilianness.19 Presaging the
turn-of-the-millennium anxiety over the precarious state of the Amazon
by nearly a century, Brazil’s civil and military leaders and the newspaper-
reading public evoked the “illiterate,” “unintelligent,” and “primitive” in-
habitants of remote national terrain to justify its takeover by indigenist
patriots who were willing to risk their lives for the sake of the nation.
17. Rumors circulated that satellites would enable foreigners to target untapped mineral
wealth. U.S. Marine officer Peter Witcoff suggested in a 1999 study that “SIVAM might
benefit U.S. national security interests in Latin America” (Wittcoff 1999, xix–xx). In 2008, a
Raytheon employee who had worked on the project could offer no evidence of U.S. military
use of SIVAM. Clearly, the technology has potential for positive collaboration or abuse.
18. Ramos (2000, 3) has argued, “The tapping of indigenous knowledge and selected cul-
tural features as bait in advertising campaigns has meant profits to non-Indians the dimen-
sions of which the best informed Indians were, until very recently, unable to fathom.”
19. On “desirable” immigrants, see Diégues 1980; Lesser 1999. Abolition in 1888 created a
need for rural workers and spawned intense immigration when the government conceded
unoccupied lands to new settler colonies. Vargas established immigration quotas before
banning immigration entirely in 1932. The ban was lifted in 1934, and the 1937 Constitution
limited newcomers annually to 2 percent of each national immigrant population (Diégues
1980).
P5331.indb 44 10/15/10 1:53:14 PM

In the aftermath of the Canudos War (1896–1897) and a series of bloody

confrontations between indigenous peoples and settlers infringing on
their lands, a young military officer of Bororo descent named Cândido
Mariano da Silva Rondon established the Serviço de Proteção aos Índios
(SPI) in 1910 to lay a more enlightened path on which the country might
continue its jarring passage into modernity.20 Driven by the motto “Morrer
se preciso for, matar nunca,”21 Rondon aimed to “pacify” indigenous com-
munities, organize them into indigenous posts, and place them under the
protective arm of the state. During the first decades of the twentieth cen-
tury, the SPI established more than one hundred such posts, each designed
to carry out the twentieth-century version of the civilizing mission.22
In 1925, the senior-level SPI functionary Luiz Bueno Horta Barbosa ex-
plained in a newspaper interview that the indigenous posts were micro-
models of national modernity, equipped with electricity, new agricultural
technologies, innovative infrastructure, and dedicated staff (O Paiz 1925).
To address the particular needs of each community, however, the tools of
positivist change would be insufficient without that most important mo-
tor of positivist change: capital. He reasoned:
O que se faz mister, para attender a . . . outros núcleos ainda periclitantes da es-
parsa gente selvagem é o deferimento de uma verba proporcional às exigências
de um tão util de onoroso emprehendimento. Assiste-lhe à sabedoria e à compe-
tência do Congresso estudar com mais reflexão o quasi resolvido problema [do ín-
dio], fornecendo ao Serviço os meios de que não precinde para levar a bom termo
a sua grande, pia missão de humanidade e civismo [sic]. (O Paiz 1925)
The indigenist mission was thus couched in financial terms and tied
indigenous education to the Indians’ capacity for economic productivity.
Because foreign investment partially financed Brazil’s development proj-
ects (as with SIVAM, many years later), the indigenous posts would have
to become self-sustaining to survive the global financial crisis looming on
the horizon.23
20. On the origin and function of the SPI, see Diacon 2004; Garfield 2001; Hemming 2004;
Souza Lima 1995.
21. “Die if you must” but “never kill” was a directive for indigenists to sacrifice them-
selves, if necessary, to protect indigenous lives.
22. These posts were grouped under inspetorias in Manaus, Belém, São Luís, Recife,
Campo Grande, Cuiabá, Curitiba, Goiânia, and Porto Velho, and they functioned according
to local needs. Attraction posts contacted “unpacified” tribes. Frontier posts served popula-
tions in Acre, which was once Bolivian territory, had three lives as an independent republic,
became part of Brazil in 1904, and gained statehood in 1962. Residents of ranching posts
raised livestock for consumption and commerce. Literacy and nationalization posts facili-
tated the economic integration of people in “advanced stages of de-Indianization” (Secção
de Estudos do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios 1942).
23. Berthold (1922, 26–27) argued that U.S., German, and French shareholders financed
Brazil’s communication lines with North America, Europe, and West Africa before
P5331.indb 45 10/15/10 1:53:15 PM

As Horta Barbosa had feared, the 1930s plagued the SPI with severe
budget reductions.24 On July 12, 1934, President Vargas removed the SPI
from the Ministry of Labor, Industry, and Commerce and transferred it to
the War Ministry, where it became part of the Special Inspectorate of Bor-
ders. He then authorized the revision of SPI legislation to address the over-
lapping problems of border defense and nationalization (Vargas 1934).
Propaganda films produced by the SPI after these changes highlighted
the educational work carried out on indigenous posts under the milita-
rized scheme. Microcosms of positivist humanism, the “hygienic and
comfortable” posts were said to accommodate the “aspirations and cus-
toms” of those destined by “order and progress” to live on them (Secção
de Estudos do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios 1942). The film Curt Nimu-
endajú e Icatú explained:
[E]m meio de zona outrora agitada por lutas contra o índio que se defendia con-
tra invasão das suas terras, está hoje localizado este posto com seus índios . . .
apazigüados. [É] a primeira habitação construída por civilizados em terras de
índios, iniciando a mais árdua tarefa e que tem nas crianças os elementos indí-
genas que mais depressa aceitam os costumes dos civilizados. A pecuária é . . .
um ótimo veículo para introduzir a noção econômica entre os índios. . . .
[A] agricultura . . . organiza o trabalho, ensina técnicos, produz renda, ensina os
costumes civilizados e encaminha o índio para a civilização rural brasileira. . . .
[A] escola . . . introduz hábitos novos e socializa os pequenos indígenas. Muitas
vezes na mesma escola aprendem índios e civilizados, iniciando a comunhão so-
cial que o posto vai intensificar entre os adultos. (Secção de Estudos do Serviço de
Proteção aos Índios 1942)
Emphasizing the relationship between Indian vocational training and
the consolidation of a modern economy, the film made little distinction
between people and livestock residing on the posts but promised a “new”
and “productive” life to Indians who “worked happily and satisfied, alone
or in groups.” In keeping with SPI founding principles, technology and
capital would enable the indigenists to integrate neo-brasileiros socially
and economically into dominant society while harnessing their innate,
untapped industriousness to help build the nation.
As the propaganda film revealed, the educational thrust of the state’s
development initiative conflated the indigenous “problem” with the ongo-
ing struggle between man and his environment, positing both in terms of
the regional, postindependence interrogation of “civilization and barba-
rism” (Sarmiento 1986). A final scene depicts Kaingang women in discrete
Western dress weaving traditional cloth as uniformed pupils hoist the
Brazilian flag over their school under the approving gaze of their white
teachers. The narrator exclaims:
Brazilians at opposite ends of the country were able to use similar technologies to com-
municate with one another.
24. Regarding the impact of the financial crisis on the SPI, see Hemming 2003, 210–211.
P5331.indb 46 10/15/10 1:53:15 PM

A índia . . . obedece à tradição da tribo, trabalhando tenazmente num tecido que

vai fazer parte de um cerimonial. Seus dedos não cansam, e sua habilidade é
deveras impressionante. Na sua fisionomia calma e serena, há de perpassar as vel-
has recordações da vida de outras épocas, felizmente esvanecidas. A civilização
abriu-se em esperanças!
The camera moves in to show the hands of a woman tugging adroitly
on a few of the thousands of threads comprising her giant tapestry—a
reminder of the immense challenge of creating a single nation from so
many ethnic, cultural, and social strands. Staring forlorn into the distance,
she suddenly breaks a smile and glances at the flag raisers. The narrator
raises his voice over a crescendo of classical fanfare and concludes: “O
SPI, sob o pálio do pavilhão nacional, espera cumprir seu sagrado dever
de proteger e civilizar os índios brasileiros.” We are left with the image
of schoolchildren—one line for boys and another for girls—gazing up at
their flag as it waves in the winds of felicitous change.25
Throughout SPI discourse, this paternalism interpellated indigenous
people of all ages, who, according to the Civil Code of 1916, were “legal
minors” in need of state supervision.26 The colonialist trope of perpetual
infancy and its accompanying tutelary apparatus thus has long curtailed
the possibilities for self-representation by equating Indianness with rela-
tive incapability.27 Similar rhetoric has been used to rationalize the mar-
ginalization or “underdevelopment” of indigenous (and other) subalterns
ever since Simón Bolívar, on the threshold of American independence,
depicted colonialism itself as a state of “permanent childhood.”28
25. As of 2005, there were fifteen Kaingang living in Icatú (founded as an indigenous
post in 1919) and 28,830 throughout Brazil (Veiga and Rocha D’Angelis).
26. The 1973 Indian Statute kept this practice in place. The 2002 Civil Code likewise spec-
ified the exceptionalism of the indigenous condition but only after explaining the “relative
incapacity” of adolescents, drug addicts, the mentally handicapped, and the financially
insolvent. Article 4 of chapter 1 states: “A capacidade dos índios será regulada por legisla-
ção especial.” See the Web sites of the Presidência da República and FUNAI, respectively,
http://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/LEIS/2002/L10406.htm and http://www.funai.gov
.br/quem/legislacao/estatuto_indio.html.
27. The 1988 Constitution altered the legal condition of native peoples to make “Indian”
a permanent ethnic category rather than a transitory phase in the process of becoming Bra-
zilian, but the protective authority of the state remained in place. As a result, “Indians and
communities who are not already integrated into the national communion are subject to the
tutorial regime established in the Law” (chap. 2, art. 7). In the late twentieth century, legal
ambiguity created opportunities for some individuals and groups to gain special rights as
“posttraditional” Indians (Warren 2003, 19). As Hoffman French (2009, 69) argued in the
case of one such community, the imprecise nature of the law has made it an “expandable
and prismatic phenomenon” subject to “post-legislative negotiation.”
28. See his 1815 “Carta de Jamaica.” Following Bolívar, ideologues of American indepen-
dence, including Andrés Bello, José Enrique Rodó, Franz Tamayo, José Carlos Mariátegui,
José Vasconcelos Calderón, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, referred to the region’s “infancy”
and the need to bring it to “maturity” through education. On postrevolutionary Cuba, for
P5331.indb 47 10/15/10 1:53:15 PM

In 1945, three years after the film was produced, President Vargas insti-
tuted National Indian Day to formalize state recognition of the indigene-
ity within Brazilianness. In his commemorative address, the head of SPI’s
Educational Sector, Herbert Serpa (1945), tied the messianic indigenist
mission to the physical integrity of the nation:
É para os índios que devemos voltar de coração e espírito, agradecendo-lhes as
heróicas defesas que primeiro praticaram do solo brasileiro. É para os índios que
devemos volver o pensamento quando alçamos o pendão da América livre que
êles perfeitamente simbolisam. . . . [P]ara que a natureza formidanda não lhe ven-
cesse a luz da inteligência humana, [Rondon] desencantou o homem selvícola,
para que, ouvindo pela primeira vez a voz e o chamamento da pátria, surgisse
de dentro da mata, e punhando o auriverde pendão, como a dizer às gentes das
fronteiras: “Aqui começa o solo da pátria brasileira” [sic].
Until 1967, when the military regime dismantled the SPI and replaced it
with the Fundação Nacional do Índio (FUNAI), this prophecy of racial-
ized modernity would have neo-brasileiros hoisting the flag over the Am-
azon to consolidate national power over precious metals, gems, minerals,
timber, rubber, petroleum, and other potential sources of wealth there-
in.29 This was the precedent to Sivamzinho raising the national flag and
guarding the Amazon in 1999. In both cases, the protection at hand was,
for the most part, fiction.
Because, according to SPI doctrine, Indians in frontier regions near Bo-
livia and Peru had to be seduced from nomadism, settled, nationalized,
and trained to secure contentious borders, indigenist education was also
a question of national security. Following Foucault (1990), modernization
and its burgeoning capitalist order were overlapping projects of biopower
that relied on the seizure and controlled insertion of human beings—in
this case, as individuals and communities—into an increasingly global-
ized and foreign-owned machinery of production. Brazilian modernity
meant not only the appropriation and transformation of traditional indig-
enous places—a process that the anthropologist Antonio Carlos de Souza
Lima (1995, 131) characterized as “a massive siege of peace”—but more
succinctly, what Foucault (1990, 140) might have called “the calculated
management of [indigenous] life.” The process of interior development
was thus twofold. On the one hand, it meant the demarcation, takeover,
and settlement of traditional indigenous territories. On the other hand, it
example, Guevara (1979) wrote, “La sociedad en su conjunto debe convertirse en una gigan-
tesca escuela (7). . . . [T]odavía estamos en pañales (11).”
29. Renato Ignácio da Silva (1970, 334) characterized the struggle over Amazonian riches
as a Cold War conflict, asserting that Brazil was “cobiçado por dois lôbos que rondam o
mundo inteiro.” Although covetous explorers hailed from many countries, North Amer-
icans were the most egregious: “[P]rocuram levar tudo, inclusive minérios atômicos! . . .
[F]izeram o levantamento aerofotogramétrico da região em 1965 (e de todo o território na-
cional!) como se nós os brasileiros vivêssemos em 1500!” (da Silva 1970, 333–334)
P5331.indb 48 10/15/10 1:53:15 PM

Figure 3 Community unidentified in SPI records (circa 1930). Courtesy of the Museu do
Índio/FUNAI Archive.
meant the demarcation, takeover, and settlement of indigenous bodies,

which were squeezed into uncomfortable clothes, national consciousness,
and imaginary citizenship through a system of production and positivist
propaganda that, at least in retrospect, evokes the slave labor that Brazil
had officially abolished more than a half century earlier.
The staging and visual documentation of these efforts point to the ways
in which, as Deborah Poole (1997) has studied in the case of Peru, fictions
of racial progress circulated physically and ideologically inside and be-
yond national borders. Through the still-burgeoning arts of photography
and film, the SPI documented its heroic arrivals to distant lands and the
transformative power of its influence on the people living there. Hun-
dreds of after shots reveal “improved” Indians posing under the invasive
gaze of their photographers, whose Orientalizing images became essen-
tial blocks of the racialized nation-building project under way. As Walter
Benjamin (2007) argued shortly after this picture (figure 3) was taken (in
a prophetic nod to Giddens), the mechanical reproduction of this imagery
had the power to disrupt familiar configurations of time and space. Pass-
ing through the hands of indigenists and newspaper readers alike, care-
fully staged photographs helped make nameless Indians and their exotic,
parallel world personal and familiar, shattering the Amazonian aura of ro-
manticized alterity and replacing it with uncannily modern subjects who
could be reimagined and inserted into the dominant majority’s preferred
P5331.indb 49 10/15/10 1:53:17 PM

representation of their country. The highly fragmented nature of the

documentation regarding photographed subjects and their lives suggests
that details mattered little to the architects of indigenist modernity or to
the consumers of their imagery. More important was the message that
positive (and positivist) change was possible and could be accomplished
through that most modern of republican institutions: the school.
The goal of making Indians “useful” through schooling was, however,
not unique to Brazil, and in fact reflected a central component of the pan-
American indigenist initiative that flourished during the early twentieth
century. This supranational indigenism culminated in the First Inter-
American Indigenist Congress of April 1940 in Pátzcuaro, Mexico, and
the formation of the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (III) in Decem-
ber of the same year.30 Even at the regional level, then, Indian usefulness
was tied to civic responsibility and to economic productivity. By linking
indigenous peoples to their self-appointed protectors, the III helped in-
stitutionalize (and imagine) an international educational apparatus as a
central mechanism through which geopolitical mappings of Indianness
and nationhood would take place across the Americas.31 As the documen-
tation from these schools reveals, indigenous pupils were expected—like
the legion of Sivamzinhos, many years later—to internalize and repro-
duce the very knowledge by which they would be marginalized.
In 1940—the same year that the III held its first congress and seven years
after Gilberto Freyre (1973) published his foundational manifesto (Casa
Grande e Senzala) in praise of Brazilian miscegenation—Rondon made a
public address to President Vargas, who had just completed a widely pub-
licized visit to Karajá communities on the Ilha do Bananal (Tocantins).32
On behalf of the SPI’s newly formed governing body, the general used his
speech to pose a rhetorical question—“Que é o índio?”—and offered his
rhetorical response: “A preciosidade maior que encontramos na ‘Marcha
para o Oeste’” (O Radical 1940). Conflating the indigenists’ goal of protect-
ing and developing Indians with Vargas’s desire to protect and develop the
30. The proceedings read: “Los países de América deberán proporcionar a sus masas
indígenas una educación que les permita, más tarde, participar en forma directa en la vida
y el desenvolvimiento de sus respectivos países” (Instituto Indigenista Interamericano
1940, 23). As a result of budgetary constraints, Brazil did not ratify the early III Convention
(Oliveira 1946) but became a signatory in 1953. Nonetheless, Edgard Roque Pinto partici-
pated in the 1940 meeting (Correio da Manhã) and Rondon corresponded with his regional
counterparts, including the III’s director Manuel Gamio and U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs
representative John Collier (Gamio 1946; Rondon 1947).
31. Now affiliated with the Organization of American States, the III supports collabora-
tive policy to promote “indigenous development” across the region. Current members in-
clude Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guate-
mala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. The United
States was a member until 2000.
32. Once Northern Goiás, Tocantins gained statehood in 1988.
P5331.indb 50 10/15/10 1:53:18 PM

“West,” Rondon proposed that a key strategy of the joint endeavor would
be to create among native communities new material needs through the
provision of modern tools, thereby turning them into consumers and pro-
ducers of new wealth.33 The market logic of modernity therefore allowed
indigenous peoples to be reconfigured from within the indigenist imagi-
nary by modifying their status as obstacles to national progress to vital, if
perhaps unwitting, agents of the same. In the overlapping processes of the
modernist incursion into the Amazon, victims would be warriors, com-
modities would be customers, and slaves would be citizens.
“CIVILIZAÇÃO PARA OS ÍNDIOS DA AMAZÔNIA!”34

(AN INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVE?)
At the outset of the SPI’s crisis decade, a Guarani man named Inhan-
deru sought an interview with a major newspaper in the capital. “Mario
Cardoso,” as his “civilizers” called him, had been expelled from his com-
munity in Avahy (Paraná) because of his “defense of and love for his race”
(A Noite 1931). Alleging mistreatment at the hands of SPI functionaries, the
young man appealed to the minister of agriculture to intervene on behalf
of his people. He decried the impunity with which the organization ap-
proached its mission and claimed the subjects of protection were not the
Indians but the indigenists: “Os funccionários do Serviço de Proteção . . .
são uns verdadeiros algozes de índios. Obrigam-nos a trabalhos forçados,
e à menor queixa, mandam-nos agarrar e metter no calabouço. . . . O índio
não tem direito a nada. . . . Trabalham elles, de sol a sol . . . e em troca só
recebem maus tratos e prisão [sic]” (A Noite 1931). Inhanderu’s testimony
thus reiterates not only that the SPI brutality documented in horrendous
detail by the Figueiredo Commission in the 1960s had in fact been taking
place for over half a century but also, more important, that at least some
victims had long sought redress from the state on their own behalf.35 His
allegations cast a grim light on the cheery images of Indian labor that the
indigenist apparatus showcased as national progress.
A generation later, Lyrio Arlindo do Valle, self-declared “cacique dos
indios Tembés,” echoed Inhanderu’s claims in a letter written to Getúlio
Vargas, in which he claimed to speak for “all the Indians and rural poor
living in the sertões.”36 “I come,” he explained to the president, “to solicit
33. Darcy Ribeiro (1970, 496–503) identified this dependency as a stage of “ethnic trans-
figuration,” which would transform “tribal Indians” into “generic Indians,” but never “de-
Indianize” them.
34. This is the title of an article published in A Noite (Rio de Janeiro) on June 12, 1947.
35. The commission, set up by the military regime to discredit the SPI, found it complicit
with rape, torture, murder, and genocide (see Hemming 2003, 227–234).
36. The document, also studied by Seth Garfield (1997), is typewritten on Ministry of
Agriculture letterhead and titled “Memorial do Sr. Lírio Arlindo do Vale, diretamente ao
P5331.indb 51 10/15/10 1:53:18 PM

your protection.” Identifying himself as a “civilized Indian” from Pará who

had studied with Catholic priests, served in the navy, and supported the
revolution that brought Vargas to power, Valle claimed to have worked for
years as an SPI functionary, often under coercion and without remunera-
tion. Frustrated with the broken system but eager to “redeem his fellow
Indians” and make them “useful to the fatherland,” Valle pleaded for the
dissolution of the SPI: “Para a verdadeira proteção é precçiso uma nova
organização [sic].” Reiterating Inhanderu, he added, “Peço não aceitar en-
formações da falsa proteção aos índios, como eu não aceito, porque o S.P.I.
é de proteção aos brancos e não aos índios [sic].” For whatever else it might
have been, this effort—and Inhanderu’s before it—must be seen as part of
the larger and ongoing struggle for legitimate political representation.
A radical suggestion thus accompanied Valle’s admonition: “Vossa Ex
sabe quem pode dar proteção ao indio é o proprio indio, indios çivilizados
que querem ser aproveitados [sic].” Reasoning that Rondon, old and tired,
had “forgotten the Indians,” Valle made the case for indigenous leader-
ship (his own) of a new public enterprise of indigenist advocacy. His de-
sire for this “new beginning” was, however, remarkably in line with the
existing regime of state tutelage. Likewise, his revolutionary proposal for
indigenous leadership of the state’s indigenist apparatus (a proposal yet
to be realized)37 invoked the long-standing trinity of national modernity
(science, security, and development) through the familiar rhetoric of edu-
cation. Valle made it clear, for example, that, if appointed to a leadership
position, he would establish schools to train Indians in agricultural and
ranching technologies. Regarding national security, and as a testament to
his willingness to counter the audacity of “foreign invaders” and fight for
a “free Brazil,” he likened himself and his sons (both soldiers), to colonial
legend Poti, whose spirit they carried in their “blood and minds.”38 Fi-
nally, as was Sivamzinho, the Tembé leader was mindful of his civic duty
and eager to see Indians driving Brazil’s capitalist engine into the future.
He promised: “Se Vossa Ex. estiver disposto a nos ajudar, no decorrer de
Sr. Dr. Getúlio Dorneles Vargas.” It is dated September 1945 but has a distribution date
of October, and it contains many errors and spelling inconsistencies, including in the au-
thor’s name. Although Valle claimed to have written the letter, SPI functionaries may have
typed (or retyped) it. At best, then, Valle’s enthusiasm for Vargas’s policies offers insight
into the ambiguous nature of “neo-Brazilian” thought. At worst, it is another instance of the
indigenist appropriation and manipulation of indigenous subjectivity.
37. The current FUNAI president, Márcio Augusto Freitas de Meira, originally from
Pará, is a nonindigenous Brazilian with academic training in French, history, and anthro-
pology. As of June 2010, members of the Brazilian Indigenous Movement were campaign-
ing intensely for his removal and for the election of indigenous leadership.
38. The Potiguara warrior, immortalized by the novelist José de Alencar in Iracema,
fought alongside the Portuguese against the Dutch during the first half of the seventeenth
century.
P5331.indb 52 10/15/10 1:53:18 PM

dois anos, apareçera em belem do Pará os primeiros produtos dos índios

do Brasil que mesmo poderá enfluir na economia nacional [sic].”
Finally, Valle’s plea was made in the context of successful state penetra-
tion of the hinterlands, which he argued had reined in the illicit exploita-
tion of land and people—especially seringueiros (rubber workers). For this
progress, the cacique expressed enthusiasm: “[Agradeço] em nome de to-
dos os seringueiros do Amazonas, porque foi Vossa Ex que acabou com os
traficantes de çearensse para os sertões amazonicos. . . . Esses seringueiros
que hoje rendem gratidão a Vossa Ex estão retribuindo de melhor forma
possivel, porque Vossa Ex acabou com a escravidão do soldado da borra-
cha [sic].” Valle thus condemned the flawed execution of indigenist policy
but not the hegemony of its imperialist rationale or the assumption of na-
tive backwardness on which it was premised.
“CIVILIZAÇÃO PARA OS ÍNDIOS DA AMAZÔNIA!” (AN IMPERIALIST PERSPECTIVE?)

In 1947, the same year that Valle wrote to Vargas, the United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) undertook
a study of basic education in the Hylean Amazon.39 Led by Bernard Mish-
kin, a naturalized, North American anthropologist, military officer, and
businessman (Wagley 1955), and under the auspices of the International
Institute of the Hylean Amazon (IIHA),40 the survey considered obstacles
to educational programs serving indigenous and caboclo populations in
the Amazon Basin. The Brazilian press hailed the project as the advent
of “civilization for Indians of the Amazon” who were living “a primitive
existence comparable to that of [their] Stone Age ancestors” (A Noite 1947).
Mishkin’s report, presented later that year in Mexico and France but (as
far as I have been able to determine) never analyzed elsewhere, offers a
unique perspective on indigenous schooling in relation to national and
international modernizing discourses. Notwithstanding its bias, the doc-
ument serves alongside the testimony of Inhanderu and Valle as a coun-
39. Dicionário Aurélio explains that Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Goujaud Bon-
pland used hylea (from the Greek hylaîa, meaning “of the forest”) to refer to the Amazon
during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. NB: This is not the oft-cited 1952 UNESCO
study of race relations led by Charles Wagley, Thales Azevedo, Roger Bastide, Florestan
Fernandez, Luiz de Aguiar Costa Pinto, and Renée Ribeiro. On that report, see Chor Maio
2001; Ribeiro 1997.
40. A model of international collaboration established in the spirit of postwar diplomacy,
the IIHA had its headquarters in Rio before moving to the Amazon. Though staffed with
Brazilian scientists and led by National Museum director Heloisa Alberto Tôrres, the or-
ganization was accused of marginalizing national science, turning the country’s natural
wealth over to foreigners, and threatening national sovereignty (Diário do Congresso Nacio-
nal 1949).
P5331.indb 53 10/15/10 1:53:19 PM

terpoint to the government documentation so often used to tell the story

of Brazil’s native peoples.
The background for Mishkin’s report (1947b, 4–5)—that indigenous
protection was consistently inconsistent—may ring familiar: Although
some indigenist leaders were efficient and dedicated, others were “hope-
lessly corrupt” or “usually drunk.” Although some respected Rondon’s
minimal intervention policy, others aimed to “implant the concept of
productive labor [and] educate the Indian to work” (Mishkin 1947b, 3). In
Amazonas State, where most people eked a living from the various ex-
tractive industries available to them, SPI functionaries established lumber
camps and auctioned wood off of indigenous lands (Mishkin 1947b, 2).
Mishkin (1947c, 6–8) corroborated the abuse of seringueiros that Valle had
noted and depicted as precarious the lives of other Amazonians who were
perpetually overworked and chronically undernourished.
Notwithstanding the breadth of his observations, Mishkin’s primary
task was to surmise the state of the educational system that the govern-
ment was hailing as a crowning achievement of the SPI and the endur-
ing promise of the indigenist nation-building enterprise. He observed
that schools were not located in native villages and that most indigenous
children in fact had no access to education at all. The limited instruction
available to them was offered only in Portuguese, and indigenous authori-
ties had no say regarding the programs targeting their own communities.
Mishkin (1947a, 3) offered these observations of Bororo schooling on the
indigenist post of Córrego Grande (located approximately 155 miles from
Cuiabá):
It is difficult to estimate the number of days per year the school actually operates
. . . . I would guess . . . two mornings a week for one reason or another—the
students do not appear; the teacher is indisposed and wants to catch up on her
housework. . . . The textbooks used . . . are 1st year—Meu Livro; second year—
Meus Deveres; third year—Minha Pátria. All three books have been prepared for
instruction in the City schools and make as much sense to the Indian as the atomic
bomb. . . . The few Portuguese words the students learn in the school they forget
in a few weeks.
Mishkin’s (1947b, 28) findings that schooling was “alienating” and lack-
ing “connection with the life of the Indian” thus contextualize the icono-
graphic documentation and upbeat activity logs that SPI administrators
and teachers maintained during the same period.41 As did his indigenous
contemporaries, the anthropologist impelled his readers to question the
efficacy and justice of teaching Portuguese grammar and civics to mono-
41. Even in more urbanized areas, however, “exhausted and malnourished” students
sat in “badly lighted, crowded rooms” to receive instruction from “tired teachers through
hopelessly outmoded, inadequate texts.” The 1933 Vargas Report cited by Mishkin (1947b, 9)
had concluded that only 3 percent of the national population had an elementary-level
education.
P5331.indb 54 10/15/10 1:53:20 PM

lingual indigenous children who would never enjoy the full rights of na-
tional citizenship.42
Shortly after completing this study, Mishkin (who would later be placed
under investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a possible
communist spy43) published a controversial critique of the good-neighbor
policy in the Nation. Contrary to what one might expect from the author
of the UNESCO reports, he called not for a softening of political and eco-
nomic imperialist practices but for their intensification:
Any attempt to save democracy in South America would put the United States
in the position of a doctor who rushes into a house to discover that the patient
not only is not ill, but does not live there. In none of these countries is there a
democratic basis of government. . . . The continent was compelled to stew in its
own juice. A juice whose salient characteristics were and are a backward eco-
nomic structure, feudal mentality, poverty, . . . ignorance, illiteracy, . . . and acute
despair. . . . [S]outh America is made for exploitation, gets a living from it, pre-
carious though it may be, and is unprepared for any other kind of existence. The
exclusion of foreign imperialism at this point would bring disaster. . . . [These] are
the first principles of a revolution calculated to break up an anachronistic social
system whose continued survival is inimical to the interests of the United States.
(Mishkin 1949, 510–515)
Considering that these comments—more seemingly written by a Da-
vid Norman than by a communist sympathizer—were published just fif-
teen years before the U.S.-supported coup ousted Brazil’s democratically
elected government, it would seem that some in Washington were indeed
sympathetic to Mishkin’s critique. As is well known, the military regime
that would come to power made the industrial exploitation of the Amazon
and its peoples a cornerstone of national development policy, planting the
seeds for SIVAM (and FINRAF) along the way.
CONCLUSIONS: FROM PRIVATE PLACES TO PUBLIC SPACES
Anthony Giddens (1990, 19) argued that the advent of modernity

brought about a radical reconfiguration of traditional temporal and spa-
tial relations and the “dislocation of space from place.” If social practices
in “premodern” societies were tied to a particular location and a specific
moment, he explained, in conditions of modernity, those ties are undone
42. The year the SPI was dissolved, the teacher Angelina da Silva Vicente (1967) from the
indigenous post Capitão Vitorino documented lessons on the national anthem, Indepen-
dence Day, “respecting the flag,” voting, and elections. On the content SPI schooling, see
Devine Guzmán 2003. On the question of indigenous citizenship, see Ramos 1998, 89–118.
43. Documents that the anthropologist David Price (2004) secured through the Freedom
of Information Act place Mishkin in Brazil during the late 1940s as an employee of the
Nesco Company. They do not mention his work for UNESCO or the documents examined
here. Accusations regarding Mishkin’s political activities remain inconclusive (Price as-
serts his requests for CIA documentation were ignored) and warrant further study.
P5331.indb 55 10/15/10 1:53:20 PM

and reestablished according to myriad additional influences—many of

them distant in space and time. Like the “reflexively applied knowledge”
that in modernity comes to question its own certainty and restructure
itself accordingly, fixed relationships between particular ways of being
and thinking and their supposedly “proper” locations are undone in
and by modernity to become “free-floating” (Giddens 1990, 39). Place
thus refers to an identifiable location on the map where most of the so-
cial dimensions of life were once carried out. Space, in contrast, invokes
the broader and potentially infinite social dimensions of modernity—
dimensions that include forces that might exercise their influence from
afar. Place and space can therefore coincide, and oftentimes overlap, but
the consequences of modernity make such coincidence and overlap in-
creasingly infrequent. As a result, “[w]hat structures the locale is not
simply that which is present on the scene; the ‘visible form’ of the locale
conceals the distanciated relations [that] determine its nature” (Giddens
1990, 19).
From the SPI indigenous posts to Xingu, and from the UNESCO study
to SIVAM (and FINRAF), the ongoing reconstruction of national moder-
nity through indigenist thought and practice helped convert the Brazilian
hinterlands—like the Amazon—from places to spaces. Through its real or
perceived power to alter traditional configurations of time and space, in-
digenous schooling was a key mechanism through which native commu-
nities were reconfigured as modern and national—or in any case, always
on the threshold of national belonging. As I’ve argued here, the ongoing
consolidation of Brazilian modernity brought with it a politics of anti-
imperialist imperialism. After all, FINRAF primarily reiterates the neo-
colonialist gesture of a century of state-backed indigenist initiatives (e.g.,
SPI, PIX, III, FUNAI, IIHA) through a hyperbolic rendering of SIVAM,
which represents a real and ongoing initiative to restructure the Amazon
and the existence of the people who live there.44
The processes of disjuncture that convert places into spaces are useful
for thinking about the social transformations impelled by indigenist pol-
icy through the biopolitical ordering of individual and collective bodies.
The disembedding of knowledge, culture, and social praxis from modern
44. Since this article was written in 2008, indigenous communities in the Amazon have
come to face a new collective threat: the government’s plan to build the third-largest hydro-
electric dam in the world in the south of Pará. A cornerstone of the Growth Acceleration
Program (Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento, or PAC), the dam would divert the flow
of the Xingu River, flood indigenous lands, dislocate the town of Altamira, and destroy
the livelihood of those who depend on fishing. The designation Belo Monte is particularly
unfortunate, as inhabitants of the tragedy-stricken community of Canudos at the end of the
nineteenth century used the same name—the vast majority were killed by the Brazilian
army in 1897. As of June 2010, indigenous organizations across the country were staging an
intense and extended protest of the Belo Monte initiative.
P5331.indb 56 10/15/10 1:53:20 PM

centers of political and economic power, and their violent insertion into
communities still organized according to precapitalist modes of produc-
tion, provided the political, social, and economic mechanisms through
which the private places of indigenous life were usurped as a public space
that, in turn, was appropriated to represent the nation—or at least, the
community imagined as national (Anderson 1991).45 This manipulation
has enabled generations of nationalists, regardless of political orientation,
to equate the Amazon with Brazil and “the Indian” with “the people.”46
Never mind that only 8 percent of Brazilians reside in the Amazon or that
“the Indians” represent over two hundred ethnic groups speaking more
than 180 languages, yet comprise less than one-half of 1 percent of the
overall population.
On the verge of the SPI’s institutional crisis many years earlier, the in-
terim director José Bezerra Calvalcanti alluded to the institutionalized ap-
propriation of Indians and their lands:
Antes de tudo, tratamos de amparar os nossos silvícolas onde quer que eles es-
tejam. . . . [N]ós os congregamos em pontos convenientes e ahi os ensinamos a
trabalhar e a economizar os frutos do seu trabalho. . . . [E]m matéria de ensino . . .
o principal intento é ministrar-lhes conhecimentos . . . dos offícios mais ao alcance
da intelligência delles. . . . Para isso foi o território nacional dividido num certo
número de inspetorias [sic]. (Jornal do Brasil 1929)
Each inspetoria was then divided further into the network of postos indí-
genas studied here, where lives were not so much protected as they were
managed according to the regional, national, local—and inevitably—
personal interests reflected in the indigenist agenda at hand. Forty years
before the Figueiredo Commission documented SPI abuse of the populace
it was meant to safeguard, Calvalcanti cut to the heart of the agency’s fa-
tal contradiction by inadvertently disclosing a de facto open-visit policy
operating under his supervision, leading his interviewer to an exultant
conclusion: “[Q]ualquer pessoa pode, em qualquer dia e sem necessidade
de licença especial, visitar qualquer dos estabelecimentos do Serviço de
Indios [sic]” (Jornal do Brasil 1929). This assertion contradicts decades of
official indigenist policy regarding the mission to safeguard indigenous
peoples precisely by safeguarding their territories.
Long before its precipitous decline, the state’s indigenist apparatus was
already flawed—not only by paternalism or the quixotic mission of trying
to turn people into something they were not but also by its vulnerability
to unpredictable, and at times, arbitrary administration. By making pri-
vate indigenous places public—physically, as in the case of Xingu; rhetori-
cally, as according to Calvalcanti; and ideologically, through the notion
45. Giddens (1990, 21) explains “disembedding” as the removal of “social relations from
local contexts of interaction and their restructuring across indefinite spans of time-space.”
46. As Antônio Torres (2000, 11) put it: “O índio é o povo.”
P5331.indb 57 10/15/10 1:53:21 PM

Figure 4 Rondon at an SPI school (circa 1922). Courtesy of the Museu do Índio/FUNAI
Archive.
Figure 5 Students from São José dos Marabitanas receive Sivamzinho notebooks (1998).
Courtesy of Leila S. R. Guzmán.do Índio/FUNAI Archive.
P5331.indb 58 10/15/10 1:53:21 PM

of education—the indigenist apparatus was implementing precisely the

opposite of protection. As is known, this ambiguity would be a harbinger
of dark days to follow. In continuity with the imperialist pulling apart of
time, space, and place that hailed modernity, the work of indigenism and
“Indian schooling” went hand in hand with the slicing up, parceling out,
and consumption of native peoples and their lands. As in David Norman’s
imaginary world, where impunity reigns and the Amazon is subject to
the whims of power, the undoing of “primitiveness” in the name of sci-
ence, security, and capital was the patriotic task of the hour. And the ques-
tion at hand: how to turn a profit off of our educated Indians in our modern
America?
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A Noite (Rio de Janeiro)

1931 “Defendendo seus irmãos de raça.” February 27, n.p.
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Anderson, Benedict
1991 Imagined Communities. New York: Verso.
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Béhague, Gerard
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Devine Guzmán, Tracy

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P5331.indb 62 10/15/10 1:53:26 PM

R ECONST RUC T I NG I N DIGE NOUS
ETHNICITIES
The Arapium and Jaraqui Peoples of the
Lower Amazon, Brazil
Omaira Bolaños
Rights and Resources Group
Abstract: In Latin America, indigenous identity claims among people not previ-
ously recognized as such by the state have become a key topic of anthropological and
sociological research. Scholars have analyzed the motivations and political implica-
tions of this trend and the impacts of indigenous population’s growth on national
demographic indicators. However, little is known about how people claiming indig-
enous status constructs the meaning of their indigenous ethnicity. Drawing from
sixty-four in-depth interviews, focus-group analyses, and participant observation,
this article explores the double process of identity construction: the reconstruction
of the Arapium indigenous identity and the creation of the Jaraqui indigenous iden-
tity in Brazil’s Lower Amazon. The findings reveal six themes that contribute to the
embodiment of a definition of indigenous identity and the establishment of a discur-
sive basis to claim recognition: sense of rootedness, historical memory, historical
transformation, consciousness, social exclusion, and identity politics.
INTRODUCTION
Latin American Indigenous Movements

During the 1980s and 1990s, the rapid rise of neoliberal policies pro-
duced responses from several civil society organizations that challenged
the ability of the state to address pressing societal problems. In that con-
text, the rise of Latin American indigenous mobilizations generated major
struggles and achievements over representation and indigenous peoples’
human rights (Posteros 2007; Yashar 2005). However, as Hale (2002) has as-
serted, none of these achievements would have been possible without the
previous strengthening of indigenous organizations at different levels,
especially community-wide, where processes of re-Indianization created
new patterns of indigenous mobilization. Indigenous peoples’ political
mobilization came in conjunction with claims of indigenous identity from
I thank the Tropical Conservation and Development Program and the Amazon Conserva-
tion Leadership Initiative at the University of Florida and the Education for Nature/World
Wildlife Fund fellowship for their support of my studies and research project in Brazil.
I also thank the anonymous LARR reviewers for their insightful comments.
P5331.indb 63 10/15/10 1:53:26 PM

different groups reaffirming forgotten ethnic identities and assertions of

rights over land to secure cultural continuity (Occhipinti 2003; J. Oliveira
1999). A major concern of this phenomenon is the cultural assimilation
processes that many indigenous groups experienced, which apparently
made them similar to the dominant Western society. In many cases, this
is the primary issue governments have used to argue against the legal
recognition of indigenous status and associated rights for certain groups
(Santos and Oliveira 2003; Warren 2001).
Although this identity-based political mobilization has gained in-
creased attention, analysis has tended to focus on the understanding of
the material forces that motivate identity claims and the national and in-
ternational political conditions and legislative reforms that have favored
their expression. Little is known about how people construct the meaning
of the indigenous identity they claim. In this article, I offer an analysis
from within and below, referring to the internal dynamics indigenous
communities use to reconstruct their sense of indigenousness and their
articulation into external political rights struggles. My intent is to under-
stand how indigenous peoples, whom outsiders consider acculturated or
assimilated, have resignified their sense of indigenousness and positioned
it as their political flag. In this sense, I am concerned with the intertwin-
ing of the material, symbolic, and historical means that contribute to the
embodiment of ethnic identification. I place this analysis within the recent
political mobilization of nonrecognized indigenous groups in Brazil who
claim indigenous status and land rights.
Rise of Indigenous Peoples’ Claims for Recognition

Across Latin America there has been a dramatic change in demo-
graphic recovery of indigenous populations. For instance, using statistics
reflecting high fertility rates and a decline in infant mortality, McSweeney
and Arps (2005) show the rapid growth of lowland indigenous groups
over the past two decades. Besides the improvement in health and living
conditions, scholars have predicted that the trend to shift self-definition
is another factor that has contributed to this demographic recovery (Perz,
Warren, and Kennedy 2008). Even Argentina, which traditionally had a
“taken-for-granted indigenous absence” (Gordillo and Hirsch 2003, 6) in
the formation of the nation-state, experienced a rapid rise in indigenous
populations as a result of claims for recognition (Occhipinti 2003). What is
interesting is that groups considered extinct or assimilated have partici-
pated in this ethnic mobilization.
Scholars have argued that these presumably extinct groups have found
a legal base to reassert their hidden indigenous identities and recuper-
ate their territorial rights in international and national indigenous rights
legislation (Warren 2001; Yashar 2005). Others assert that the democrati-
P5331.indb 64 10/15/10 1:53:27 PM

RECONSTRUCTING INDIGENOUS ETHNICITIES 65
zation process in Latin America in the past three decades has favored
the public reclaiming of indigenous identity and collective rights (Brysk
2000; Posteros 2007; Yashar 2005). With the consolidation of neoliberal
policies, macroeconomic changes, and structural reforms of state institu-
tions, indigenous peoples have undertaken major political mobilizations
to challenge structural forms of inequality that have traditionally defined
the relationship between the nation-state and indigenous peoples (Pos-
teros 2007; Yashar 2005). In Bolivia and Ecuador, indigenous movements
have skillfully used the discourses of social exclusion and dominate-
subordinate relationships to pressure constitutional reforms and create a
new set of democratic principles and inclusive citizenship rights that pro-
mote respect for ethnic and racial diversity (Canessa 2007; Yashar 2005). In
Colombia, different forms of interethnic dialogues and regional activism
among indigenous intellectuals, local indigenous leaders, native politi-
cians, civil society, and anthropologists have created a way to negotiate
diversity and operate creative tactics of indigenous politics (Rappaport
2005).
Brazil regained democracy in 1985 after twenty-one years of authoritar-
ian rule, and with it, the restoration of political freedom, citizenship rights,
the revitalization of political institutions, and a new cycle of economic
growth. The 1988 Brazilian Constitution modified the assimilationist in-
digenous policy that for five centuries had defined the relationship be-
tween the state and indigenous peoples. The new constitution recognized
indigenous peoples’ rights to their own institutions, social organizations,
languages, cultural traditions, and their original lands (Ramos 2003). Un-
der this new climate of human rights legislation, Brazil has experienced
a remarkable increase in its indigenous population, contrary to what
had been predicted—a progressive decline and extinction of indigenous
groups. For example, Ribeiro (1996) presented figures that demonstrated
the continuous decline of the indigenous population and predicted they
would eventually become totally acculturated and assimilated into the
national society. In the 2000 national census, however, seven hundred
thousand people reportedly identified themselves as indigenous peoples
(Kennedy and Perz 2000; Ramos 2003). The explanations for this popula-
tion growth are complex and diverse, but among them, the assertion of
indigenous identity is one of the most contentious.
The emergence of several indigenous groups claiming recognition
of indigenous status started in northeastern Brazil during the 1970s
(J. Oliveira 1999), reached the Southeast during the 1980s (Santos and
Oliveira 2003; Warren 2001), and in the late 1990s emerged in the Lower
Amazon in the state of Pará (Bolaños 2008; Ioris 2005; Vaz 2004). Schol-
ars have shown that, during the 1950s, there were roughly ten indige-
nous groups in the Northeast, but by 1994, that number had increased to
twenty-three (J. Oliveira 1999). What makes the movement controversial
P5331.indb 65 10/15/10 1:53:27 PM

is the lack of cultural distinctiveness, cultural mixing, and the recent

emergence as indigenous peoples in an area of major cultural changes
due to European colonization and subsequent national development
initiatives.
The indigenous movement of the Lower Amazon has developed in a re-
gion considered among the most highly affected by the processes of colo-
nial expansion, devastation, and miscegenation. Indigenous populations
were thought to have been assimilated or extinct, and cultural and racial
mixture was considered a distinctive trait of the region’s population (Mor-
eira 1988). People of the region have been traditionally defined as caboclo,
the mixed blood offspring of indigenous populations and Portuguese set-
tlers (Parker 1989; Wagley 1976). In this sense, caboclo is the counterpart
of the mestizo category of the Spanish-speaking countries, which refers to
the “mixing” of “races” and “cultures” (Whitten 2007, 359). On the basis
of a linear historical notion, the caboclo is considered the direct result of a
series of events and conditions that destroyed the Amazonian indigenous
population (Ross 1978) through a process referred to as “caboclization”
(Parker 1989, 251).
However, Amazonian populations rarely use “caboclo” as a category
of self-definition (Pace 2006). It has not constituted a form of collective or
ethnic identification (Harris 2003). Instead, most people tend to identify
themselves through geographical reference or by the types of activities
they do (Harris 2000). The term caboclo is generally considered derogatory,
usually meaning “a person without social value.” However, some scholars
have highlighted caboclo as a symbol of adaptation and knowledge of the
Amazonian ecosystem (Moran 1993; Parker 1989). In the Lower Amazon’s
Tapajós-Arapiuns region, caboclo is not used, not only because of its con-
notation but also because people do not consider that the term defines
them (Vaz 1997). Instead, the term índio constitutes an important concept
in the evolving process of self-definition: from a stigmatized and hid-
den identity to a category of ethnic pride (Bolaños 2008). The term índio,1
in Latin America considered a colonially assigned identity symbolizing
the removal of indigenous peoples from their own history (Wade 1997;
Whitten 2007), became in the mid-1970s in Brazil a new unifying iden-
tity category that emerged from the indigenous peoples’ political practice
(R. Oliveira 1988). In the lower Tapajós-Arapiuns region, the term índio
also became a political rallying point represented through the slogan, “I
am an índio and I am not ashamed of it” (Bolaños 2008).
The Indigenous Council Tapajós-Arapiuns (CITA) currently represents
twelve indigenous groups of the lower Tapajós-Arapiuns region that claim
1. I use the term índio with its new implied positive and political meaning. To be coher-
ent and respectful of people’s own interpretations of their history and identities, I do not
postulate the idea that they have shifted identity from caboclo to índio.
P5331.indb 66 10/15/10 1:53:27 PM

the recognition of their indigenous status and land rights2. The CITA is as-
sociated with the Coordenação das Organizações Indígenas da Amazônia
Brasileira (COIAB), which have jointly participated in several national in-
digenous rights demonstrations. Members of CITA have lost fundamental
characteristics such as language, religious beliefs, and traditional social
structures that distinguish them as indigenous peoples. Thus, CITA is
making efforts to recuperate the língua geral, or Nheengatú, considered
their native language. Nheengatú was the primary language Jesuit mis-
sionaries used during colonial times to evangelize and “civilize” indig-
enous populations. Borges (1994) has asserted that, since the eighteenth
century, Nheengatú has become the main language and symbol of new
identity formation for some indigenous groups. This is particularly true
for indigenous peoples of mixed descent, such as the Baré and Baniwa
of the Negro River (Borges 1994). In 2004, CITA contacted an indigenous
Baniwa from the Negro River to help rescue the language. In addition,
CITA has been encouraging the use of Nheengatú in special celebrations,
meetings, and at schools.
In this article, I examine how the people of the lower Tapajós-Arapiuns
region construct the meaning of their indigenous identity and the sources
that contribute to the embodiment of their ethnicity. I specifically provide
analysis of the double process of identity construction, that is, the recon-
struction of the Arapium indigenous identity and the creation of the Ja-
raqui ethnic indigenous identity. These groups share the same territory
and descend from one major family that split to form two communities,
Lago da Praia and Caruci, in the municipality of Santarém, in the state of
Pará. The two communities have maintained a close but competitive rela-
tionship. When they joined CITA, people from Lago da Praia decided to
self-define as Jaraqui, which is the name of the most common fish in the re-
gion. The other group maintained their identity as Arapium. The Arapium
community interpreted self-definition as Jaraqui as a form of betrayal to
their people and an erroneous political strategy that might complicate the
process of land demarcation. None of the Arapium communities of the
region recognizes the Lago da Praia people as of Arapium descent. Never-
theless, this has not constituted a conflict for the Jaraqui people’s member-
ship and active involvement in CITA’s ethnic politics. In fact, this decision
has given the Jaraqui a unique position in the indigenous movement, be-
cause their self-definition represents a new form of resistance—that of not
fitting into the identity categories to which they are supposed to relate.
The analysis here is based on sixty-four in-depth interviews, focus-
group analyses, and participant observation carried out during fourteen
months of field research between 2004 and 2007. In this article, I show
2. These indigenous groups are Munduruku, Maytapú, Arapium, Tapajó, Jaraqui, Cara-
Preta, Borari, Tupinambá, Cumaruara, Arara-Vermelha, Apiaká, and Tapuia.
P5331.indb 67 10/15/10 1:53:28 PM

how both identities are both joined and differentiated. The identities are
based on historical practices and relationship with the land. The recon-
struction of Arapium identity is based on the recovery of old memories
of a neglected ethnicity, whereas the Jaraqui identity appears as a way to
value people’s essential practices of survival and as a form of distinction
between the two communities. I argue that indigenous identity and land
rights claims are not just the products of present sociopolitical struggles.
Instead, they are founded on collective historical memories and territorial
meanings that have enabled the Arapium and Jaraqui peoples to recover
and imbue their sense of indigenousness with new meaning. Both the
political struggle to resolve land conflict and the symbolic and cultural
meanings constructed through historical interaction with their territory
frame the claims for recognition.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Arapium People in History: From Assumed

Disintegration to Revitalization
In colonial history and in the contemporary literature focusing on
Amazonian indigenous populations, the extinction or assimilation of in-
digenous people is generally presumed to be inevitable. However, con-
temporary expressions of ethnic assertion by presumably assimilated, or
extinct, indigenous groups question linear historical conceptions of colo-
nial domination and ethnic and cultural change as a uniform and uncon-
tested process. Particularly, I refer to the notion of change as a single, one-
way process that anticipates that the fate of indigenous peoples is only to
become progressively acculturated and assimilated. The social transfor-
mations that Amazonian indigenous peoples have experienced have been
interpreted as indicators of cultural disintegration, which implies that the
colonial social-political organizations and later dominant national socie-
ties absorbed, nonetheless, indigenous peoples who had managed to sur-
vive the effects of colonization. Caboclization refers largely to this idea,
which assumes that indigenous peoples adopted national identities and
disregarded their own ethnicities (Parker 1989; Ross 1978). Little attention
has been given to processes of accommodation and re-creation of social-
cultural expressions emerging from long-term forms of interaction and
cultural mixture (Whitehead 1993).
There is also a tendency to reproduce historical interpretations that
privilege and exclude certain regions and social groups and often ignore
the struggles for survival, the persistent attempt to resist, the overthrow-
ing of hegemonic control, and strategic forms of accommodation (Sweet
and Nash 1981). Priori and Gomes (2004) talk about the notion of mar-
gins, meaning the need to decentralize the history by placing value on
P5331.indb 68 10/15/10 1:53:28 PM

the understanding of local histories as part of the nation-state formation

and allowing different interpretations of the diverse sociocultural pro-
cess of territorial occupation. In this sense, the contemporary assertion of
indigenousness indicates the need to review official historical interpreta-
tions that assumed a homogenizing process of change. More important,
it shows the need to understand how the loss of traditional cultures does
not translate into a loss of ethnic identity (Ramos 2003).
In general, little evidence of indigenous group names exists in the co-
lonial written record. When indigenous peoples are mentioned, they are
mostly referred to as indios, meaning Christianized Indians, or in other
cases as tapuio, livres (free), or escravos (slaves) (Daniel 2004 [1841]; Penna
1869). This is the case of the Arapium, whose name seldom appeared in
the Brazilian historical record. Among the scarce information available, it
is known that the Jesuit missioner Manuel Rebelo first contacted the Ara-
pium at the beginning of the eighteenth century. They were gathered at
the Jesuit mission Nossa Senhora da Asunção dos Arapiuns, located at the
confluence of the Tapajós and Arapiuns rivers (Daniel 2004 [1841]; Leite
1943). Jesuit missions constituted centers for detribalization, native lan-
guage loss, and cultural transformation. Jesuits reinforced the adoption
of the língua geral, or Nheengatú, a language derived from Tupi-Guarani.
For at least two centuries, this language represented the Portuguese dom-
ination in the Amazon region (Borges 1994).
The presumed disintegration of the Arapium culture coincides with
one of the major colonial reforms in Portuguese indigenous policy, aimed
to integrate indigenous populations into the colonial economic and social
systems. The Directorate Policy of 1757–1798, better known as the Direc-
tory of Pombal, stated that the Jesuits no longer had spiritual and economic
control over the indigenous population and expelled the order from the
Brazilian territory. The law eliminated Indian slavery and replaced it with
a system of government-administered forced labor, promoted miscege-
nation to “civilize” the indigenous population, and made the use of the
Portuguese language mandatory (Almeida 1997; Moreira 1988). According
to Nimuendaju (1963), the indigenous Arapium were last reported in 1762.
Scholars argue that the directory worsened indigenous peoples’ condi-
tion. They continued to be enslaved and forced to provide military ser-
vices (Hemming 2008; Sampaio 2004). It is believed that these processes
gave origin to the tapuio, a generic, detribalized indigenous person, who
became the main source of forced labor (Moreira 1988). “Tapuio” was a so-
cial category that represented the process of disintegration of indigenous
cultures and ethnicities.
Other historical events, such as the Cabanagem, also contributed to the
notion of the disappearance of the Arapium. The Cabanagem, a popu-
lar revolt against the tyranny, socioeconomic injustice, and deprivation of
the local and regional power, devastated many Amazonian indigenous
P5331.indb 69 10/15/10 1:53:29 PM

groups (Priori and Gomes 2004). The revolt, which developed in the Ama-
zon region from Belém to the margins of Negro River during 1835–1841,
caused a major genocide of indigenous peoples, black slaves, and people
of mixed descent (Cleary 1998). The revolt was a “genuine and deeply vio-
lent rising of oppressed masses” and the governmental reaction to con-
trol it created racial hatred (Hemming 2008, 121). The campaign to regain
military control proposed the extermination of all those considered suspi-
cious of rebellion, such as the tapuios, and indigenous tribes that assisted
the rebels, black slaves, and others of colored skin (Cleary 1998). The effect
of the population reduction was felt for many years after the revolt, espe-
cially and more severely in the Santarém area (Hemming 2008).
Subsequent economic developments in the region, such as the rubber
boom of the late nineteenth century, are considered to have consolidated
the transformation of the remaining indigenous population into a peasant-
type society (Parker 1989; Ross 1978; Wagley 1976). Amazon peasantry has
traditionally been portrayed as the direct antagonist of Amerindian society
and as being at the forefront of colonial and postcolonial economic devel-
opment expansion. Contemporary analysis suggests that the penetration
of merchant capital and availability of land and other resources had been
what has contributed to the formation of the Amazon peasantry, not the
alteration of indigenous social formation (Nugent 1993). Harris (2000, 2003)
has asserted that the traditional representation of Amazonian peasantry
ignores the complex and diverse social reality and the local forms of rela-
tions with capitalist forces through informal economy, petty commodity,
migration, and conflict. He also has pointed out that it is through such dy-
namic interactions that the identity of the Amazon peasantry has evolved.
For these reasons, withdrawal of the Arapium people from the official
written record became a taken-for-granted confirmation of their disap-
pearance as a distinctive people. However, 239 years later, the Arapium
have reappeared in the regional and national context of political struggle
for recognition. To date, sixteen communities in the region assert Ara-
pium identity and seek state recognition.
The Emerging Movement

The indigenous movement of the lower Tapajós-Arapiuns region be-
came known in 1998, when the community of Takaura, located along the
Tapajós River, claimed recognition as indigenous Munduruku and the
demarcation of their lands (Ioris 2005; Vaz 2004). This claim for recogni-
tion created concerns because it appeared in the context of negotiations
between the Brazilian Institute for Renewable Natural Resources and
the Environment (Instituto Brasileiro do Meio Ambiente e dos Recursos
Naturais Renováveis, or IBAMA) and local communities to clarify land
rights within the Flona Tapajós forest reserve (Ioris 2005). After Takaura’s
P5331.indb 70 10/15/10 1:53:30 PM

claim, the indigenous movement rapidly spread over the lower Tapajós
and Arapiuns rivers’ region—thirty-eight communities have since claimed
their indigenous status and land rights. In 2000, CITA was founded, repre-
senting indigenous peoples from the municipalities of Santarém, Aveiro,
and Belterra in the state of Pará.
In 2001 and 2003, respectively, the Arapium and Jaraqui peoples of
the communities of Caruci and Lago da Praia joined the regional indig-
enous movement. Both communities are located along the left bank of
the lower Arapiuns River and share a territory known as Cobra Grande.
Caruci has a population of 89 people, whereas Lago da Praia has 146. The
first phase of the process of land demarcation, which corresponds to the
definition of territorial limits, was initiated by the Fundação Nacional
do Índio (FUNAI) in 2008. The proposal for land demarcation includes
an area of 8,840.25 hectares. Recognition of the land rights has not yet
been decided. Although the Arapium and Jaraqui people have established
well-coordinated efforts in their struggle for land rights, the situation is
not reflected when they seek governmental services, such as indigenous
education. It is here that there are highly marked differences and compet-
ing interests between the groups. The selection of the location of an in-
digenous educational center has become an ongoing conflict between the
two groups. The Arapium, who consider themselves a better-organized
community with stronger leadership, have managed to retain the center.
Meanwhile, the Jaraqui have managed to delay the initiation of the educa-
tional program until the center is relocated to their community.
The collective struggle in CITA for land rights confronts not only a long
and complex administrative process of land demarcation but also ongoing
developmental and environmental disputes that envision the Amazon re-
gion as an area of economic potential and an ecological hot spot of global
concern. In the current context of Brazilian economic growth, the Lower
Tapajós constitutes a key region for the integration of Amazonia into the
global economy and the consolidation of Brazil’s commercial leadership
in South America (Coelho, Castro, and Hurtienne 2001). This is expected
to happen through the consolidation of the soybean industry and the im-
provement of the national transportation system (the paving of Highway
BR-163). In contrast, the creation of new protected and extractive reserve
areas constitutes an environmental strategy to contain further pressures
from development. In this context, the indigenous movement is consid-
ered a new, unwanted political actor that has complicated negotiations
among environmentalists, development agents, and the government. The
cultural and racial mixture of CITA members has been one of the main
issues on which opposition to their rights claims are based.3
3. For a detailed discussion of this issue, which is not the subject of this article, see
Bolaños (2008).
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UNDERSTANDING THE RECONSTRUCTION OF INDIGENOUS IDENTITIES
Methodology
I used grounded theory methodology to analyze data from the inter-
views and field notes of this study (Charmaz 2006; Strauss and Corbin
1998). This method allowed for the study of people in their natural set-
ting and a focus on meaning. I followed the constructivist approach of
grounded theory, which assumes the relativism of multiple social reali-
ties, recognizes the mutual creation of knowledge by the viewer and the
viewed, and aims for the interpretative understanding of the subject’s
meanings (Charmaz 2006). To develop the interviews, I used a topic guide
from which I asked questions to help elucidate topics of interest related to
self-definition as indigenous peoples. I also collected personal conversa-
tions and recorded observations that helped contextualize the content of
the interviews. I recorded and conducted all interviews with the informed
consent of the informants. Focus groups provided a space to develop in-
depth discussions about emerging issues from the interviews.
My analysis produced six major themes that constitute the conceptual
sources through which the material and symbolic meanings of the Ara-
pium and Jaraqui ethnicities are explained: (1) sense of rootedness, (2) his-
torical memory, (3) historical transformation, (4) consciousness, (5) social
exclusion, and (6) identity politics. Table 1 presents the themes and the cat-
egories that explain the meaning of the indigenous ethnicities. As a way
to develop the analysis, I present each theme in a separate section to focus
on the internal relationships of the categories of each theme. However,
this strategy does not mean that each theme is independent or unrelated
to the others. The order of presentation also is not intended to indicate a
hierarchy or ranking of themes. It is simply a writing strategy that permits
the narrative flow. In practice, the themes and their categories fit together,
and their relationship and importance vary according to context.
Sense of Rootedness
The unique relationship of indigenous peoples with their land has been
invoked as a critical issue and an irrefutable moral argument to support
claims of indigenous identity (Occhipinti 2003). Sense of rootedness has
been considered the special relationship and emotional attachments that
indigenous peoples have developed for their homelands through long
processes of experience and acquired knowledge (Feld and Basso 1996;
Stewart and Strathern 2003). The way indigenous peoples feel attached to
land has taken on a central discursive role in Arapium and Jaraqui peo-
ples’ claims for recognition. This is especially important for them because
they are not simply claiming a piece of land; they are claiming the rights
over the land to which they feel emotionally embedded, which holds past
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Table 1 Themes and Categories Emerging from Indigenous Peoples’ Narratives

Themes Categories
Sense of rootedness Place of origin

Attachment to land
Perception and experience of land
Territoriality
Historical memory Indian descent
Family memories
Local history
Authenticity
Historical transformation Racial/cultural mixture
Enforced assimilation
Differentiation from ancestors
Consciousness Restrictive knowledge
Acquiring knowledge
Indian pride
Social exclusion Indian stigma
Discrimination
Identity politics Symbolic representation
Indigenous movement influence
Indigenous rights
Access and allocation of resources
and present memories, communities’ histories, and myths. Armed with

international and national legislations on indigenous peoples’ rights, such
as International Labour Organization Convention 169 and the National
Constitution, CITA members have emphasized their attachment to their
lands and their original rights to their territories on their claims.
When talking about the formation of the two communities, people al-
ways emphasize two conditions: being natives of the Arapiuns River region
and being the original people who settled the area and constituted the two
communities. Here, native is related to the internal movement of popula-
tion and to kinship relations established throughout the region. This net-
work of kinship relations has given them a sense of territoriality, that is,
the interpretation of the Arapiuns River region as Arapium territory:
Being Arapium means that I was born in the Arapiuns, I am nativo of Arapiuns,
and I live in the Arapiuns region . . . [T]hus, for us, our people is Arapium. . . . [W]e
discovered we are Arapium, because we have families in the high part of the river
in the community of Mentai, and the índios who lived there were the Arapium. . . .
[W]e are Arapium because of our region and because it is known that here, Caruci
and the other side of the river, belonged to the Arapium people. . . . [W]e had the
privilege of inheriting this land—that is why we are Arapium!
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The land of the Arapium and Jaraqui embraces three interrelated

spaces, the roça (area in the forest cleared for a garden), the forest, and
the river. These are not totally separate entities. They provide the sources
for making people’s identity and reinforcing kinship and social relations.
The roça constitutes a place in which interpersonal, community, and cul-
tural relationships occur. Among the products of the roça, manioc flour,
or farinha, constitutes the staple food and holds important symbolic and
political meanings. Farinha is defined as Indian food. This makes the
manioc and farinha more than a social crop and product. They both are
invested with political meaning originating from their association with
Indian food and culture. They are reinterpreted and highlighted as sym-
bols of indigenousness.
In both communities, fishing is the main source of subsistence and cash
income. However, it is through the meaning of the fishing activity that
the Arapium and Jaraqui mark their differences as indigenous peoples.
The Jaraqui emphasize that their identity is particularly tied to the river
and the jaraqui fish, which constitutes their main source of protein. They
interpret their community as “the place of jaraqui fish,” and the fish as the
main source of their indigenous identity:
People say that Lago da Praia is the place of the jaraqui fish . . . the typical fish of
the region. When the school of fish comes, we get a lot of jaraqui. The fish is what
identifies this place; that is the reason for us to be índio Jaraqui. . . . [T]he fish is our
subsistence. . . . [W]e took its name, because fishing is what we do, jaraqui is what
we eat. . . . [W]e are Jaraqui!”
For the Jaraqui people, the mixture of boiled or roasted jaraqui fish
with farinha represents a symbolic way of nurturing their identity: by
eating, they invigorate their body and their soul with the essential sub-
stance that constitutes what they are—índios Jaraqui. Examples of the
relationship between food and constitution of identity can be found in
other cases among Amazonian indigenous peoples. For example, Vilaça
(2007) found that among the Wari’ of the state of Rondonia, Brazil, food
was central to the constitution of physical identity. For the Wari’, social
relationships, physical proximity, and commensality construct the body
throughout life. By adopting the Jaraqui identity, people from Lago da
Praia manage to represent the symbolic and political meanings that con-
tribute to their self-definition and differentiate them from their Arapium
neighbors. This is important because, in their political struggle, the Ja-
raqui people display a complex sense of who they are by essentializing
their identity as rooted in the land and/or river, but they detach them-
selves from local history. Their identity is tied not to the Arapium people,
who were in the territory before the colonial regime, but to their own
lived historical experience.
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Historical Memory
Memory constitutes a crucial element in the construction of identity. It
is a powerful source of knowledge and emotions that helps shape identi-
ties. Memory is the product of social and cultural experience embedded
in objects, places, and practices. Scholars argue that memory as a product
of historical social experience involves processes of remembering and for-
getting (Middleton and Edwards 1990; Misztal 2003). Memory is crucial to
our understanding of present circumstances—it helps us not only explain
the past but also understand the present.
From the interviews, one way to express historical memory is through
the recognition of indigenous descent, which implies looking back into the
family history for a fact, event, or memory that links the person to the no-
tion of indigenousness. The generational component is among the key fac-
tors that nurture peoples’ sense of indigenousness, because it places them
in history as indigenous peoples. Remembering past generations consti-
tutes a key element in the effort to legitimize peoples’ political claims.
In the process of remembering and sharing memories, people reinterpret
and rediscover features of the past that give new meanings to their own
identity:
I knew about my ancestors through my grandmother; she told me that her parents
were Indians. She talked about the índios, the names of the índios that I do not
remember any more. . . . [S]he said that they used to visit her there in the place she
lived . . . that place was inhabited by índios. . . . [S]he told me that she was an índia
mesma [authentic Indian].
In the analysis of identity claims by the indigenous Pataxó of eastern

Brazil, Warren (2001) shows how family memory helps construct the con-
cept of indigenousness by evoking and stressing indigenous ancestry in
their genealogy. Those family memories also revolve around histories of
conquest, race exploitation, and anti-Indian racism that ancestors suffered.
Hoffmann (2002), analyzing the case of Afro-descendants in the Pacific re-
gion of Colombia, found that memory and ethnicity were associated with
the definition of belonging and the shared historical experience of dis-
crimination and exclusion among people of different racial and cultural
ancestry. This association facilitated their land rights claim.
The term índio mesmo, which constantly emerged in the narratives, con-
tains a depth and critical meaning in the assertion of indigenous identity.
In this case, the term not only explains genealogical indigenous descent
but also is intended to mean “authentic” índio. This notion gives people
legitimacy in a context that questions racial and cultural mixture as an
expression of indigenousness:
Here índio mesmo used to live, true índios! Wild índios as some people say . . .
[T]hey were the real índios, the ancestors of our families. . . . [W]e are from the
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same root, but we have changed, though we continue to do the same things they
used to do.
Family memories are full of images of the índio mesmo, from which the
meaning of the present condition as indigenous peoples is derived. More-
over, in the context of the political struggle for indigenous rights, the term
índio mesmo broadens its meaning to refer to political commitment to the
indigenous movement. Indio mesmo is the individual who stands up and
struggles for his or her rights, who self-identifies as índio without shame,
and who speaks out for the indigenous movement. Through this term, in-
dividuals acquire a privileged status that distinguishes them from those
who do not belong to the group and cannot be trusted.
Historical Transformation
Historical transformation refers to the different events and social-
political conditions that induce processes of cultural and ethnic change.
When talking about their sense of indigenousness, the Arapium and Ja-
raqui place themselves in an ambiguous condition. That is, they recognize
that their experience as indigenous peoples is contemporary and differs
from that of past generations. Their assertion of ethnic identity is based
not on concepts of continuity, as if they were the same as those indig-
enous people from centuries ago, but on change. Historical changes gave
origin to new forms, meanings, and understandings of what it means to
be indigenous. The construction of Arapium and Jaraqui ethnic identities
encompass apparently contradictory images, traits, and stereotypes that,
however, do not exclude them from definitions of indigenousness. The
historical transformation contains explanations that depart from what
they interpret as racial and cultural mixture:
Here in the Amazon, there was a mixture of races, especially the mixture of whites
with other different indigenous groups. That is why people call us caboclo . . .
but for us a cabloco is not much different from an índio, it is just the name that is
different. In fact, we are considered as tapuios; the true tapuios of the Amazonian
region. Tapuio is an índio mixed with black, white, and other índios . . . the cur-
rent Arapium is not a “pure” índio. Moreover, the current Arapium varies in term
of skin color, whether brown or almost black, and the type of hair . . . but what
really matters is that the current Arapium believes in his culture, believes that he
is an índio, and behaves as an índio mesmo.
Important issues emerge from this description, such as the categoriza-

tion of ethnicity through phenotype features and the use of intermedi-
ate categories of definition. The use of the terms caboclo and tapuio signal
important questions about the nature of ambiguity and the significance
of the relationship between racial and social relations. This significance,
derived from historical and political factors, establishes conditions for so-
cial and cultural change. In the Brazilian anthropological understanding
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of the presumed inevitable extinction of indigenous cultures, the terms

caboclo and tapuio explain the process of cultural disintegration and repre-
sent a continuum in the acculturation process. In this continuum, tapuio
comes first and refers to an Indian who has lost his or her original ethnic
identity and the normative system of his or her original culture. Tapuios
represent the homogenization of diverse indigenous cultures (Moreira
1988; Ribeiro 1996).
Although the term tapuio in Brazilian literature specifically refers to
a descendant of different detribalized indigenous groups, peoples’ nar-
ratives include a new feature—mixture with blacks—which provides
an added controversy to the indigenousness claim. Warren (2001) refers
to the case of the indigenous Xacriabá in Brazil who are not generally
viewed as índios mesmos by non-Indians because their mixed descent
resembles the phenotype of Afro-descendants. Whitten (2007) talks about
a third category of mixture in Spanish Latin America: zambaje, a person of
indigenous and African descent, which in some Central American coun-
tries is known as Miskito or Garifuna (Pineda 2001; Whitten 2007), and in
Brazil as cafuso (Moreira 1988). Zambaje is considered a counterhegemonic
category that challenges the idea of mestizaje as a homogenizing form of
whitening (Whitten 2007).
Caboclo, in contrast, represents the historical, economic, and politi-
cal forces that consolidate the transformation of indigenous populations
(Parker 1989; Ross 1978; Wagley 1976). Caboclo has a remote indigenous
ancestry, meaning that the caboclo is an acculturated Indian. Until quite
recently, in Brazilian anthropological thinking, the term caboclo referred
to a benevolent fate reserved for indigenous peoples; their only chance
for survival (Gomes 2000). However, what emerged from the narratives
is that the terms caboclo and tapuio have been reinterpreted as forms of
indigenous persistence.
Moreover, the notion of mixture expressed in the narratives challenges
the official conception on which it is based. In Latin American countries,
mixture, or mestizaje, emerged as an official discourse and nation-building
ideology that supposedly dismantled colonial forms of racial and ethnic
differentiation and oppression (Wade 1997; Whitten 2007). Mixture, as the
key symbol of national identity, promoted the idea that mixed peoples
constituted a homogeneous subject. That is, by the very process of mixing,
its constitutive parts, the Indian and the black, would disappear through
the whitening process. Biological miscegenation and cultural assimilation
were considered the way up in the social hierarchy. In other words, mix-
ture was a form of “de-Indianization” of the stigmatized Indian cultural
traits and Indian blood (Field 2002, 15). The idea of disappearance implies
that Indians and blacks in the long term would not represent significant
referents of identity. In the present case, these social categories not only
did not disappear but also are being actively reconstructed as key ele-
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ments of their political claims. Cultural and racial mixture, then, is rein-
terpreted as a form of continuity rather than as disappearance. This is an
assertion that emphasizes change as a critical element of ethnic identity.
Indeed, these ideas remind us that cultural change does not necessar-
ily generate change of ethnic identities, as if it were a linear cause-effect
action (R. Oliveira 2006). Whitten (2007) asserts that the phenomenon of
interculturality offers a new alternative to the racial fixity of the mestizaje
ideology. Interculturality, which stresses movement from one cultural
system to another, valorizes indigenousness and blackness and permits
the confrontation of racial categories born in colonial times.
Consciousness
Consciousness is the process of coming into existence and becoming
active as indigenous peoples. Consciousness includes the task of recap-
turing peoples’ history by dismantling imposed restrictive knowledge
that distorted the understanding of their history. Restrictive knowledge
removed indigenous peoples from their own history and inscribed in
peoples’ minds that they were no longer indigenous. Embedded in social
structures of power, this restrictive knowledge worked as an explanatory
framework of indigenous peoples’ history and fate. These ideas inter-
preted indigenous peoples not only as inferior but also as subjects of im-
minent extinction:
Although we were índios, although we were born índios, and our parents and
grandparents were índios, we did not have knowledge of that. . . . [W]e thought
that we were whites, but now we know that índio is what we really are.
Consciousness also includes the task of acquiring knowledge to pro-

vide new value to their role in history as indigenous peoples. Hill (1996)
asserts that the first task for disempowered people to resist domination
and ethnic stereotyping is the construction of a shared understanding of
the historical past that enables them to understand their present condi-
tions. Analysis of indigenous Wakuénai’s narratives shows that these are
not “folkloristic representation of a pristine indigenous past” but a way
to reinterpret their historical struggle and change as rooted in the history
of expansion of colonial and current globalizing forces (Hill 2008, xix).
Acquiring knowledge and a new understanding of their past and present
reality has helped the Arapium and Jaraqui self-define as índio and re-
interpret both where they came from and who they are:
I was thirteen years old when I self-identified as índia and began to search for
information about índios. I asserted my identity and strengthened my relation
with the indigenous movement and with the people of the region. We are resistant
people that after many years of suffering discrimination, massacres, and invisibil-
ity got the courage to claim what was ours.
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This act of self-recognition, then, constituted the basis of their struggle

for legal recognition. Taylor (1994) points out that people do not acquire
the language of self-definition on their own but through dialogue with,
and sometimes in struggle against, others. The struggle for recognition
involves the validation of peoples’ self-definition and the recognition of
difference, which in practice seeks to confirm the uniqueness of the iden-
tity claim. The new knowledge that helped dismantle inscribed ideas or
historical truths also emerges in relation to a concrete problem and the
possibilities for negotiation through political struggle. Moreover, as re-
sistant people who got together to claim their identity and rights, they
constitute what Whitten (2007; 368) defines as emergent culture, which
refers to the way people represent themselves in various settings. As an
emergent culture, they confront and reject historically ascribed categories
of definition and create their own. Their identity is a renewed and politi-
cized one that not only serves the symbolic value of being indigenous but
also helps in the political struggle to secure rights.
Social Exclusion
Social exclusion in the narratives refers to the negative experiences that
the Arapium and Jaraqui suffered as a result of their ascription to a stig-
matized índio category. In the Brazilian context, a stigmatized or generic
índio constituted an Indian detached from his or her culture and ethnic
identity (Ribeiro 1996). This category placed the Arapium and Jaraqui in
a disadvantageous position that limited their potential to become full hu-
man agents in their own society. They interpret their exclusion as a prod-
uct of the lack of legal recognition of their ethnicity. That is, they suffered
exclusion and discrimination because they were categorized as merely ge-
neric índio. When talking about the many forms of exclusion, stereotypi-
cal definitions of the generic índio category appeared in the narratives:
Some people said that índios were lazy and that índios never constructed any-
thing for Brazil, and it was only because the Portuguese came that we have a
country. . . . Before if we said we were índio, we had difficulty even getting into a
school; that is why I was ashamed of being índio. In Santarém, I never said I was
índio, because of the discrimination we suffered.
Interviewees mentioned stereotypes in connection with racism and
discrimination. In Brazil, ethnic and racial prejudice continues to be a fac-
tor of social discrimination, and skin color determines the degree of so-
cial insertion into the mainstream society, as shown in the report “Racial
Inequalities in Brazil” (Paixão and Carvano 2008). People’s ascription to
the stigmatized índio category implied not only their removal from their
history but also their reduction to stereotypical symbols of isolation, in-
feriority, and alienation. The stigmatization of the índio category placed
indigenous populations in an undesirable subordinate condition with few
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legal rights. To be an índio was to be inferior and to have little social value
and citizenship rights. This practice of discrimination and stereotyping
prevented the self-identification as indigenous peoples. Field (2002) asserts
that, because of this discrimination, índios in either colonial or indepen-
dent Latin America would have had no reason to assert their indigenous-
ness. Canessa (2007) shows how in Ecuador more people are identifying
themselves as indigenous, whereas in the past they would have avoided
such a definition. As national and international legislation changed, in-
digenous peoples were able to assert their rights. Self-definition as indig-
enous has become a claim to difference, a claim to rights, and a claim to
moral authority in the face of globalization (Canessa 2007):
In every meeting, in every regional gathering of indigenous peoples, we acquire
more knowledge about our rights. . . . [W]e are discovering our rights; we are put-
ting them out to be known by our people, . . . by knowing our rights, we are more
certain about our indigenous identity. In the meetings, we learned that, like the
whites, we have rights, but we have more; we have rights only for us.
Ramos (2003) explains that for reemerging indigenous groups, the ful-
fillment of rights as citizens has great value because it represents a po-
litical instrument to transform generic exclusion into ethnic reinclusion.
In this case, the assertion of indigenous identity seeks to legitimize their
ethnic distinction and to suppress the vulnerability and limitations they
have in the access to public services and fundamental rights. The recon-
struction of their ethnic identity allows them to be more than mere índios.
They became a people with a particular ethnic identity. People define
themselves not only as índio but also as índio Arapium, Jaraqui, and so
on. The Arapium and Jaraqui not only have rejected previous negative
connotations of the term índio but also have empowered it with a new
positive and political meaning. In doing so, they challenged homogeniz-
ing regimes of citizenship and positioned themselves in a special category
of citizens with special rights, as Posteros (2007) has shown in other Latin
American countries. Rappaport (2005) has shown how the Nasa people of
Colombia experienced a transformation from a generic identity as indig-
enous people to a reaffirmation of the Nasa ethnicity through a process of
revitalization of their ancestral knowledge.
Identity Politics
Identity politics refers to the political meaning of the Arapium and
Jaraqui ethnicities. Identity politics implies the use of ethnic identity, its
symbols, and cultural practices to politically mobilize and claim rights
(Brysk 2000; Posteros 2007). In Latin America, the recent emergence of the
indigenous rights movement and the consequent politicization of indige-
nous identity are considered a result of the changes in citizenship regimes
and a defensive reaction against external threats to local autonomy and
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land rights (Yashar 2005). Yashar (2005, 71) argues that indigenous iden-
tity politics have been possible through “transcommunity networks and
political associational space” that permit mobilization among previously
dispersed communities. Arapium and Jaraqui identity politics are not an
individual process. They constitute a collective action through which they
seek to join efforts with other indigenous groups to speak out and claim
their indigenous rights. Identity politics shows how people feel empow-
ered to negotiate identity and contest power structures that constrain
their sociocultural life and self-definition.
In identity politics, symbols of ethnic identity such as history, land, cul-
ture, and belonging play an important role because they contain and dis-
play elements that contribute to their collective definition. The Arapium
and Jaraqui use these meaningful icons to articulate their claims to the
state and to civil society, and to reinforce their identity in the communi-
ties. Belonging to CITA is an important step toward recognition, defense of
their rights, and becoming visible political actors. Through the indigenous
movement, they have worked to raise political consciousness by empha-
sizing two aspects, renewed pride of being índio and political activism,
to achieve improvements in their lives by securing their homelands and
gaining access to governmental services such as education and health:
After I started participating in the meetings of the indigenous movement, I per-
ceived and reflected on where I came from, my real origin, and my ancestors. All
these things made me think about and believe I am an índio.
We [people of Caruci] received an invitation to participate in a meeting in Vila
Franca and we went. There, [CITA] explained how and what we needed to do to
assert our indigenous identity . . . then we got together here and we all recognized
that we were índios and decided to assert our identity.
Throughout Latin America, indigenous identity politics have pres-
sured for important changes in national legislations regarding indig-
enous land rights. In Bolivia, the new land reform law of 1996, known
as the INRA law for the institution it created, the Instituto Nacional de
Reforma Agraria, established collective land titling for indigenous terri-
tories as a result of indigenous mobilization that started in 1990 (Posteros
2007). In the present case, land constitutes the main symbolic and material
concern through which the collective struggle is oriented. Scholars argue
that the establishment of indigenous territories is not just about the claim-
ing of rights; rather, indigenous territories are a lived reality that contain
symbolic meanings. In this sense, land rights claims intend to defend and
revitalize people’s ethnic identity and the collective spaces of social and
cultural production and reproduction (Dávalos 2005). Killick (2008) has
highlighted the importance of the process of land titling in the opposi-
tion of centuries of domination and in the assertion of self-determination
rights of indigenous peoples in Peruvian Amazonia. By comparing the
land-titling processes of two different indigenous groups, Killick shows
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how land title claims respond to different perceptions and needs. The de-
sire to control territory and the defense of their collective identity moti-
vated the land claims of one group; for the other, it was the need to secure
education for their children.
In the lower Tapajós region, the promotion of economic development
via the expansion of the agricultural frontier through soybean production
has generated great concern among rural and indigenous communities.
They see this development as a threat to their land rights:
We hope that with the demarcation of our land, everything is going to be peace-
ful. We struggle for land demarcation to end the risk of losing our lands . . . with
the demarcation, the whites cannot enter our lands, because like those grileiros,4
soybean producers, and private loggers, they constitute a big threat for us.
The defense of their lands against this potential threat has inundated
the discursive appeal of the indigenous movement. The symbolic and eco-
nomic meanings of their land as the main source of identity and subsis-
tence became the essential language used to urge the demarcation of their
lands. As in the Arapium and Jaraqui case, indigenous peoples elsewhere
have stressed the importance of their land as part of their own history and
as a way to ensure the continuity of their culture (Occhipinti 2003).
CONCLUSIONS
The variety of themes found throughout the interviews demonstrated

that the construction of indigenous identity is a complex and dynamic
process that requires permanent interpretation. The meanings of the
Arapium and Jaraqui ethnicities evolved from the same historical condi-
tions that brought the two groups to experience radical changes, cultural
mixture, discrimination, stigmatization, and social exclusion. Although
land represented a symbolic and material historical record of their indig-
enousness, they applied different values to their land in the process of
constructing their identities. For the Arapium, the sociocultural history
inscribed in their land is what legitimizes their sense of ethnicity. For the
Jaraqui, the significance of the river and the jaraqui fish as the basis of
their subsistence is what provides the foundation for theirs. This makes
the Arapium and Jaraqui different from each other. Their collective recog-
nizes them as belonging to two different ethnic groups.
Through identity politics, land is claimed as an inseparable condition
for their own definition as indigenous peoples. Securing land rights rep-
resents a hope to guarantee the continuation of their own way of life and
4. In Portuguese, grilajem refers to the illegal seizure and appropriation of public lands.
Grileiros are the people who illegally take over the lands of other people.
P5331.indb 82 10/15/10 1:53:33 PM

permanent access to resources. As Occhipinti (2003) has shown in the case

of the Kolla and Wichi people in Argentina, land constitutes a moral and
political discursive tool to achieve recognition as indigenous peoples. Rec-
ognition guarantees not only land but also special citizenship rights. The
hope to achieve these special rights, in practice, represents a challenge to
the long history of discrimination and marginalization that has denied
them the most basic rights as Brazilian citizens. This is also a challenge
to historical and dominant forms of sociocultural definition and a way
to become what they feel they are, indigenous peoples. This case shows
how people elaborate, from within and below, their own interpretation
of history, what is valued within that history that gives meaning to their
identity, and the way they articulate it to present forms of self-definition
and representation.
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E L E C T O R A L R E VO LU T I O N O R
D E M O C R A T I C A LT E R N A T I O N ?
María Victoria Murillo

Columbia University
Virginia Oliveros
Columbia University
Milan Vaishnav
Columbia University
Abstract: Over the past few years, a burgeoning literature on Latin American poli-
tics has developed, focusing on explanations for the renewed success of the left in the
region. Building on electoral trends and public opinion analysis, we argue that the
region is experiencing the normalization of democratic politics rather than a back-
lash or a revolution. Furthermore, we believe that electoral support for the left re-
flects the disenchantment of voters with underperforming right-wing governments.
Using a unique data set covering eighteen countries in the region, our statistical
analyses demonstrate that retrospective voting provides a powerful explanation of
the recent electoral success of the left in Latin America. Thus, the central implica-
tion of our argument is that electoral accountability is still the primary mechanism
of controlling the executive in the region’s young democracies.
INTRODUCTION
In the past few years, much ink has spilt on the subject of the rise of
the Latin American left. Reflecting on the changing political winds in the
region, journalists, policy makers, and academics have all warned of a ris-
ing tide of leftist political movements across Central and South America.
From the petroleum-fueled bluster of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela to the
Bolivian cocalero Evo Morales and the former guerrilla Daniel Ortega of
Nicaragua, the impression is that a socialist revolution is sweeping the re-
gion. By contrast, in this essay, we provide a less revolutionary explanation
of the region’s changing political fortunes. We argue that the region is ex-
periencing the normalization of democratic politics and that electoral sup-
port for the left reflects the disenchantment of voters with underperform-
ing right-wing governments. Theory and empirical evidence demonstrate
that retrospective voting provides a powerful explanation of the recent
electoral success of the left in Latin America. Thus, the central implication
P5331.indb 87 10/15/10 1:53:34 PM

of our argument is that electoral accountability is still the primary mecha-

nism of controlling the executive in the region’s young democracies.
Of course, in making our argument, we do not deny that there has been
a leftward shift in Latin American politics over the past decade. Of the
nineteen presidential elections held in the region between January 2005
and May 2009, fourteen resulted in the eventual victory of a candidate
associated with a left-leaning political party or movement.1 However, by
focusing on the share of the vote obtained by all left-wing presidential
candidates rather than just the victors, we are able to show that the po-
litical movement toward the left has been more gradual than it appears
at first sight and is associated with voters’ responses to prior economic
performance.
Our theory contributes to a burgeoning literature on Latin American
politics that has focused on explanations for the success of the electoral
left in the region in the new millennium. This literature has associated
support for left-wing electoral forces with structural conditions, such as
poverty and inequality; globalization and disenchantment with neoliberal
market reforms; and the crisis of representation of Latin American politi-
cal parties.2 We contribute to this literature by showing that the electoral
growth of the left has been far more sustained than what recent headlines
suggest; it is a direct response to electoral incentives in a region that, for
the first time, is enjoying a broad and extended democratic experience.
Democratic elections have allowed voters to punish bad performers, and
we interpret the rise of the left through the lens of retrospective voting.
This explanatory mechanism is crucial in a region where young democ-
racies are characterized by a weakness of checks and balances, which
renders the vote as the primary mechanism for executive accountability
(O’Donnell 1994; Stokes 2001).
In presenting our explanation for the electoral success of the left, we do
not wade into the debate about the types of left in Latin America politics.3
Although all leftist governments claim to be committed to redistribution
1. Candidates of the left or center-left emerged victorious in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,

Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador (in 2006 and 2009), El Salvador (2009), Guatemala, Honduras,
Nicaragua, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Nonleft candidates claimed victory in Co-
lombia, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Panama (2009), and Peru.
2. For arguments on economic inequality and poverty, see Castañeda and Navia (2006);
Debs and Helmke (2008); Fishlow (2006). For arguments that the left’s rise is a response to
globalization pressures or a manifestation of disenchantment with economic reforms, see
Corrales (2007); Panizza (2005); and Stokes (2009). Finally, some scholars have pointed to
domestic institutional crisis as the mechanism that has given rise to the leftist success (see
Mainwaring 2006; Roberts 2007).
3. See, for example, Castañeda (2006); Corrales (2007); Roberts (2007); and a special issue
of the Journal of Democracy (2007) devoted to this issue.
P5331.indb 88 10/15/10 1:53:35 PM

ELECTORAL REVOLUTION OR DEMOCRATIC ALTERNATION? 89
and more equitable growth, their actual performance in office demon-

strates significant variation regarding their economic policies, thereby
suggesting a division between a more social democratic and a more
populist brand of the Latin American left (Castañeda 2006; Kaufman in
press; Levitsky and Roberts in press). Rather than enter the debates over
the categorization of left movements, we use a definition that applies to
all strands of the left—be it populist or social democratic. We take, as a
starting point, the definition that Levitsky and Roberts (in press) offered:
“the Left refers to political actors who seek to employ public authority to
protect individuals and groups from market insecurities, reduce social
and economic inequalities, and strengthen the voice of underprivileged
groups in public affairs. In other words, Left parties seek greater equal-
ity, both socioeconomic and political.” This definition of the left is based
on overarching redistributive goals irrespective of the case-specific strate-
gies pursued—be they cash-transfer social programs in the case of the
social democratic left or land reform in the case of the populist left. What
strengthens our confidence in this simple definition is that in any given
electoral contest, there is usually only one type of viable left available to
the electorate. Thus, collapsing both subcategories is useful for under-
standing cross-national patterns.
Our argument about retrospective voting resonates with recent analy-
ses of public opinion data, which also suggest that the recent electoral
fortunes of the Latin American left are not part of a revolutionary wave.
For instance, Arnold and Samuels (in press) show that a discernible left-
ward shift in terms of citizens’ ideological self-placement has not accom-
panied the so-called left turn. The authors, using time-series data from
Latinobarómetro, find little connection between Latin America’s leftist
shift at the elite level and mass public opinion. In fact, Latin American
citizens seemed to be moving toward the right in terms of ideological self-
identification between 1996 and 2001, and that shift appears to have stabi-
lized from 2001 to 2005.
Other surveys from the region support the findings of Arnold and Sam-
uels (2009). Seligson (2007) found that data from both the World Values
Survey (WVS) and the AmericasBarometer confirmed that Latin Ameri-
can citizens’ ideological self-placement on a left-right scale was skewed to
the right when viewed in a comparative perspective. In addition, Ardanaz
(2009) analyzed WVS data from 1995 to 2007, which show that there was
no significant change over time in the preferences of Latin Americans re-
garding either redistribution or state intervention.
Our own data on electoral support for the left (measured as the share of
votes in presidential elections) shows that, although the left vote in Latin
America has increased since the 1980s, the increase is not as dramatic as
some make out. At the time of writing, left or center-left presidents govern
P5331.indb 89 10/15/10 1:53:35 PM

1.0
0.8
Presidential left vote share
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
1978 1980 1982 1984 1986 1988 1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008
Year
Figure 1 Presidential Left Vote Share, by Year (1978–2008)

Note: We jittered data to make each observation more distinct. The solid black line repre-
sents the linear best fit from the regression of presidential left vote share on time, and the
dashed line corresponds to the trend in average left vote share in each election from 1978
to 2008. The horizontal dashed line provides a reference for 50 percent of the vote.
in thirteen of eighteen major Latin American countries.4 However, once

we take into account the total left vote share (the votes obtained by every
left and center-left presidential candidate, not simply by the eventual win-
ner), the red tide, so to speak, looks less robust. Figure 1 above shows that
the increase in presidential left vote share over time is not exclusively a
post-2000 phenomenon; there is no large discontinuity between the pre-
2000 and post-2000 periods.
To test our hypothesis more rigorously and to explore competing ex-
planations, we compiled a unique data set combining economic, political,
and electoral data over the period 1978–2008, which constitutes the most
extensive democratic experience in the region. Our findings demonstrate
that the Latin American left turn is a product not of electoral revolution
but of simple democratic alternation driven by retrospective voting. In
line with the public opinion analyses described previously, our quanti-
tative results support the notion that retrospective evaluations of right-
leaning presidents of the 1990s and their poor performance in handling
the economy, rather than a dramatic ideological shift of the population,
explain the increase in left vote share in the 2000s.
4. At the time of writing in June 2009, El Salvador had elected Mauricio Funes of the
left-leaning Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN) as the country’s
next president, and Ecuadorean voters reelected the incumbent leftist Rafael Correa. In
Panama, however, voters selected the right-wing candidate Ricardo Martinelli of the op-
position Democratic Change.
P5331.indb 90 10/15/10 1:53:36 PM

The remainder of the article is organized as follows. In the next section,

we present our own arguments on retrospective voting and democratic
alternation, and we describe competing hypotheses that other scholars
have offered to explain the rise of the left. We then provide detail on the
operationalization of our key variables and basic controls as well as our
modeling strategy. We then present the results of our model and review
the key findings. Finally, we conclude with some implications for our
understanding of Latin American new democracies and the study of the
electoral support for left-wing candidates.
EXPLAINING THE LEFT TURN IN LATIN AMERICA
In this section, we present the rationale for our measurement of elec-

toral support for the left (our dependent variable) and our theory of retro-
spective voting. We also discuss alternative explanations for the electoral
success of the left in Latin America that other scholars have suggested.
Electoral Support for the Left (Our Dependent Variable)

We focus here on voting behavior, and more specifically on the ques-
tion, Why do citizens vote for left-wing presidential candidates? This
demand-side equation attempts to explain the vote share of all left-wing
presidential candidates rather than just those candidates who emerged
electorally victorious.5 We argue that a focus on the latter fundamentally
misspecifies the strength of the left, because a minority of voters can elect
a left-wing president or a left-wing candidate can lose the election by a
thin margin. Hence, our focus on the vote share of the left rather than
final electoral results allows us to isolate electoral support from the conse-
quences of the interaction between institutional rules and the dynamics of
political competition, which can produce left victories even with minority
support.
A few examples from elections in the region illustrate why our ap-
proach is superior to a singular focus on the eventual winner. For instance,
a domestic institutional change combined with the division of the right-
wing vote between two candidates facilitated the reelection of former
guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega as Nicaraguan president in 2006. A 2000
reform stipulated that a candidate could win the presidential election in
5. As does the rest of the literature on the Latin American left from which we are deriv-
ing alternative hypotheses, we focus on presidential rather than legislative elections. Policy
accountability in Latin America has been theorized to pivot on presidential elections as a
result of legislative weakness and the combination of national and local demands on legis-
lators (Cox and Morgenstern 2001; Stokes 2001).
P5331.indb 91 10/15/10 1:53:36 PM

the first round with either 40 percent of the vote or 35 percent of the vote
and a five-percentage-point lead over the nearest competitor. This reform
benefited Ortega, who captured the presidency with only 38 percent of the
vote, because the two major right-leaning parties each decided to field a
candidate, thus fracturing the conservative vote among the Partido Liberal
Constitutionalista (PLC, Liberal Constitutionalist Party) and Alianza Lib-
eral Nicaragüense (ALN, Nicaraguan Liberal Alliance) (Lean 2007). While
benefiting immensely from the division of the conservative camp, Ortega
was also in a position to unify the left vote because the former popular
Managua mayor Herty Lewites, who led a Sandinista-splinter party into
national elections, unexpectedly died on the campaign trail.6
An exclusive focus on the electoral winner, however, might just as
easily understate support for the left. Take the well-known example of
Mexico’s 2006 presidential elections in which Felipe Calderón of the con-
servative incumbent Partido Acción Nacional (PAN, National Action
Party) narrowly defeated the left-leaning, former Mexico City mayor An-
drés Manuel López Obrador, of the Partido de la Revolución Democratica
(PRD, Party of the Democratic Revolution) by 0.56 percentage points (a
difference of roughly 230,000 votes of 42 million votes cast). In the end,
López Obrador earned 35.33 percent of the vote, just shy of the 35.89 that
Calderón claimed (Estrada and Poiré 2007; Schedler 2007).
These examples demonstrate why a focus on the eventual winners
does not adequately indicate the electoral following of the left; doing so
does not assess the degree of electoral support for all left-wing candidates
among the population. By contrast, our measurement of left vote share is
more accurate in terms of reflecting voters’ willingness to support left-
wing candidates in the first round; that is, before voters were presented
with only two candidates in the countries of the region that have ballot-
age. There are at least two other alternative measures of our dependent
variable that can be found in the literature. Stokes (2009) emphasizes the
strategic component of presidential elections by focusing on the two can-
didates with the greatest vote share and their relative position.7 Baker and
6. Lean (2007) has reported that preelection polls showed that the left vote was evenly
divided between Ortega and Lewites. After Lewites’s untimely death, Edmundo Jarquín re-
placed him as the presidential candidate for the Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (MRS).
On election day, the Jarquín-led MRS mustered only 6 percent of the vote.
7. We have two main concerns with Stokes’s (2009) measure. First, when the winner and
the first loser receive the same ideological score and the difference between first and second
loser is more than 5 percent, Stokes argues that there is coordination failure. As a remedy,
she treats these cases as missing data. In contrast, our measure allows us to include such
cases in our data set. Second, Stokes’s measure relies heavily on the concept of strategic vot-
ing, yet her measure of presidential vote share relies on the first round of balloting. This is
problematic because many countries in the region use ballotage systems, in which strategic
voting is substantively different. In such systems, it is perfectly possible for one to “waste”
P5331.indb 92 10/15/10 1:53:36 PM

Greene (2009), in contrast, assign different values to left-wing and center-

left candidates. We are confident that our measure is more conservative,
in that it focuses on the first round of vote and aggregates the two types of
left given the debate on its classification. By extending our analysis to the
1978–2008 period, moreover, we were able to analyze the electoral evolu-
tion of the left beyond the most contemporary period while including the
consequences of the third wave of democracy in the region.
Democracy and Electoral Support for the Left

There is some basis for viewing the recent success of left-wing parties
in Latin America as the result of the natural dynamics of democratic gov-
ernance. This approach does not view the leftist rise as a revolutionary
trend or a sudden backlash to economic, political, or social injustice in the
region. Instead, it draws inspiration from a long literature on democratic
institutionalization, electoral accountability, and retrospective voting—
beginning with the Schumpeterian notion of throwing the rascals out.
The central insight of this literature is that individuals assess the incum-
bent’s stewardship of the economy when making voting decisions on his
or her reelection. Favorable assessments lead voters to return incumbents,
whereas unfavorable evaluations result in a rotation in power (Fiorina
1981; Key 1966).
Our primary argument about retrospective voting can explain the
gradual growth of the left in the 2000s according to the twin realities of
democratic maturation and the presence, in most cases during the 1990s,
of right-wing (or, more generally, nonleft) incumbents.8 Therefore, the
emergence of left-wing leaders is simply the natural by-product of a rota-
tion in power following the incumbency of right-wing leaders who did
not perform as voters had expected. Given the popular discontent vis-à-
vis economic conditions and the importance of economic concerns and
retrospective voting in the region, partisan alternation in power may be
more likely if and when the incumbent does not perform in accordance
with voters’ expectations.
Scholars have long argued that socio-tropic evaluations of economic
conditions are among the most important determinants of vote choice in
both the developed and the developing world. In Latin America, Lora and
Olivera (2005) found that voters respond negatively to poor economic per-
formance, especially regarding high inflation; and Remmer (2002) has ar-
a vote in the first round, knowing that he or she can vote for the less preferred candidate
in a second round.
8. According to our calculations, there were thirty-nine presidential elections between
1990 and 1999. The breakdown of winners is as follows: left (one), center-left (six), center
(eight), center-right (seventeen), and right (seven).
P5331.indb 93 10/15/10 1:53:37 PM

gued that inflation has a negative impact on the prospect for reelection for
labor-based governments. Similarly, Stokes (2001) and Remmer (2002) have
argued that growth affected retrospective voting for incumbents during
the 1990s. Even for those who argue that economic downturns—such as
growth slowdowns or inflationary pressures—rather than resentment to-
ward specific policies have contributed to growing support for the left in
the region (Panizza 2005), it is important to note that Latin American vot-
ers tend to blame their incumbent governments for economic malaise.
Indeed, Latinobarómetro data show that, in most countries of the re-
gion, more than half of the population blames the government’s economic
policy for the economic problems of their countries (Alcaniz and Hellwitt
2009, table 2). Hence, because in the 1990s largely conservative govern-
ments were associated with the region’s poor growth record, we might
expect retrospective voters to punish right-wing incumbents only when
they presided over a growth slowdown or unacceptably high levels of in-
flation. Conversely, if the incumbent president is from a left-wing party,
poor economic performance would not obviously favor a left-wing succes-
sor. In this context, democratic political institutions create the conditions
for responsive government because political competition gives voters the
ability to exert political control over their representatives (Przeworski,
Stokes, and Manin 1999; Schumpeter 1962). Our main hypothesis thus
emphasizes the interaction between retrospective economic voting and
right-wing incumbents:
H1: The failure of prior economic policies reflected in poor economic growth or
high inflation increases the vote share of left presidential candidates only when
voters can blame a right-wing incumbent.
It follows from our argument, then, that the electoral ascendance of the
left in recent years can be perceived as a healthy sign of democratic institu-
tionalization and the result of the broadest and most sustained democratic
experience in the region’s history. The institutionalization of democracy
has initiated a process by which the left reintegrated into political society.
Beginning in the 1960s, leftist movements challenged the authority of the
state and often took up arms against state authorities. In almost all such
cases, armed insurgencies ushered in repressive, right-wing military gov-
ernments that crushed left-wing guerillas. By the 1990s, the revolutionary
left had virtually become a nonentity in the region; left-wing movements
have accepted electoral politics and moderated their discourse (Casta-
ñeda 1993, 2006). Similarly, the conservative right—in exchange for leftist
moderation—lifted its prior objections to democratic governance. As the
potential of communist revolution decreased, conservative elites felt more
secure in accepting inclusive democratic politics (Hagopian 2003). Hence,
left-wing parties have accepted the rules of competitive elections, and for
the most part, other mainstream political actors have accepted them.
P5331.indb 94 10/15/10 1:53:37 PM

The effects of democratic contestation grow with democratic practice

as voters’ perception of the risks of voting for the left gradually decline
over time. Therefore, for democratic accountability to work, voters must
not be afraid of expressing support for left-wing candidates; therefore,
we needed to control for the democratic experience of each country. The
more years of democratic experience, the easier it is for voters to resort to
democratic alternation—including left-wing candidates—without fear of
weakening the regime. Our hypothesis, therefore, requires that we control
for the extent of democratic experience in each country.
Structural Socioeconomic Trends and the Left Vote

Alternative explanations of the so-called left turn that has swept
through Latin America largely focus on structural socioeconomic factors,
such as the dynamics of inequality and poverty that foster demands for
redistribution or the impact of globalization, which is accelerated by the
neoliberal policies of the 1990s. Many authors have associated the recent
electoral success of the left with frustration surrounding the long-term
economic inequality in the region (Castañeda and Navia 2007; Debs and
Helmke 2008; Fishlow 2006). However, scholars differ in their views on
the relationship between inequality and electoral outcomes.
On the one hand, Castañeda (2006, 30) has argued that, irrespective
of the success or failure of neoliberal economic reforms, Latin America’s
income inequality “meant that it would have to be governed from the left
of center.” In a nutshell, greater inequality will create a demand for re-
distribution; parties that govern from the left are likely to support such
redistribution, which suggests that more unequal countries are more
likely to foster electorally viable left-wing options.
On the other hand, Debs and Helmke (2008) have argued that there is
an inverted-U-shaped relationship between inequality and the election
of a leftist president in Latin America. That is, at lower levels of inequal-
ity, people are more likely to elect the left because the rich have fewer
incentives to bribe voters to prevent the election of a left-wing candidate
(which implies redistribution to the poor through taxation). At high levels
of inequality, in contrast, the rich seek to avoid redistribution and bribe
poor voters, which decreases the likelihood that a left candidate is elected.
Therefore, we test two distinct hypotheses to assess whether the relation-
ship between inequality and electoral support for left-wing candidates
is linear or curvilinear, using both linear and quadratic specifications of
inequality. The wealth of the country, not only the degree of inequality,
affect the possibilities of redistribution. Thus, we control for the effect of
per capita gross domestic product (GDP) in assessing the impact of in-
equality on electoral demands for redistribution by supporting left-wing
candidates.
P5331.indb 95 10/15/10 1:53:37 PM

H2: As the level of income inequality increases in a society, left candidates receive
a greater percentage of the popular vote share.
H3: At low to medium levels of inequality, left candidates receive an increasing
percentage of the popular vote share. At high levels of inequality, left candidates
receive a decreasing percentage of the vote share.
An alternative explanation for the electoral support for the left stems
from the political economy literature on advanced industrial countries,
which has linked the increase in trade and capital integration with larger
welfare states through the policies of left-wing parties (Garrett 1998, 2000;
Iversen and Wren 1998). Stokes (2009) argues that globalization and the
reduced size of the public sector have improved the left’s electoral for-
tunes. She interprets the growing electoral support for the left in the re-
gion as “the electorate’s search for refuge from [economic] insecurity in
left-leaning governments.” Stokes tests these hypotheses using both trade
openness and capital account liberalization, which have been identified
as the main mechanisms for economic globalization (Simmons 1999).9
Although Stokes’s dependent variable is different from ours, we use her
measures of trade openness and capital-market openness to test for glo-
balization effects on left vote share. Following her argument, we expect
both variables to have a positive effect on the share of the vote for left-
wing candidates.
H4: At high levels of trade openness or capital market openness, left candidates
receive a greater percentage of the popular vote share.
In testing this hypothesis, we control for the size of the public sector,
which in theory should act as a buffer, protecting voters from globaliza-
tion pressures and therefore influencing their likelihood of resorting to
the left in search for safety nets. As with inequality, controlling for per
capita GDP is crucial, as the effects of globalization could vary depending
on the wealth of the country.
The Crisis of Political Representation and the Vote for the Left
Economic conditions aside, other authors emphasize the importance of
party system institutionalization (or lack thereof) in explaining the emer-
gence of left-wing and especially outsider and/or antimarket candidates.10
As Roberts and Wibbels (1999, 575) have noted, the weak institutionaliza-
9. Stokes’s regression results also test for the interactive effect of voters punishing the
right when it presided over open capital markets and when it reduced the public sector
(and punishing the left when it expanded trade openness). In the body of the article, we
present the direct effects, which are more in line with the globalization literature, but note
19 reports our results when running the interactions.
10. For the classic definition and measurement of party system institutionalization in
Latin America, see Mainwaring and Scully (1995).
P5331.indb 96 10/15/10 1:53:37 PM

tion of party systems in Latin America has given rise to “a pervasive sense
that political representation has become de-structured or unhinged, creat-
ing a volatile situation in which political identities and organizational loy-
alties are recomposed from one election to the next.” The vacuum created
by the absence of stable party institutions gives particular incentives to
political leaders espousing a more radical, leftist agenda of socioeconomic
and political change (Roberts 2007). For instance, Mainwaring (2006) has
associated the crisis of representation of political parties in the Andean
region with the emergence of outsiders. However, because political out-
siders in Latin America include right-wing presidents, such as Alberto
Fujimori of Peru in the 1990s and Álvaro Uribe of Colombia in the 2000s,
we tested for the interaction between electoral volatility and right-wing
incumbents.11 That is, we believe that only when a country experiences a
crisis of political representation under a right-wing incumbent will future
electoral benefits accrue to left-wing outsiders. If the incumbent govern-
ment is not right or center-right, outsiders could also emerge on the right
wing of the political spectrum.
H5: In conditions of high electoral volatility (as a proxy for low party institution-
alization), left candidates receive a greater percentage of the popular vote share
when the incumbent is right-wing.
Mainwaring (2006) has argued that the length of the democratic ex-
perience does not prevent a crisis of political party representation, as the
Andean outsiders emerged both in countries with a history of instability,
such as Bolivia or Ecuador, and in countries with long electoral experi-
ence, such as Venezuela and Colombia. However, we control for the dura-
tion of a particular country’s democratic experience because most argu-
ments about institutionalization—including those about political party
systems—emphasize the impact of time (Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Pierson
2004).
OUR EMPIRICAL STRATEGY
This section presents our modeling strategy and the indicators used
to measure the variables for testing our hypotheses. Our data set encom-
passes eighteen Latin American countries over the period 1978–200812—
that is, the most recent democratic period in the region. Each observation
corresponds to one presidential election in year j and country i. We have
11. For a discussion of right-wing political outsiders, see Weyland’s (2003) piece on the
elective affinity between neoliberalism and neopopulism. For a discussion of right-wing
and left-wing populism in Latin America, see Walker (2008).
12. They include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Re-
public, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay,
Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela.
P5331.indb 97 10/15/10 1:53:38 PM

a total of 106 observations across eighteen countries, ranging from two to

nine per country (see table 1 and Appendix A).
To explore our question on mass voting behavior, we constructed a de-
pendent variable that aggregated all votes for left-wing presidential can-
didates in each election year and each country. Again, we followed this
procedure to ensure that we took into account the full measure of popular
support for leftist candidates. Thus, our dependent variable considers left-
wing presidents who were elected with a minority of votes (e.g., Néstor
Kirchner in Argentina’s 2003 elections) as well as those runners-up who
narrowly lost (López Obrador in Mexico’s 2006 elections). The ideology of
the candidates was calculated using a five-point scale, where 1 = the left-
most score and 5 = the right-most score. Thus, left vote share is the total
presidential vote share obtained by all presidential candidates from the
left (1) and center-left (2) in year j and country i, and 0 otherwise.13
To test our main hypotheses about retrospective voting, we created the
variable right incumbent. This variable is an indicator that takes the value 1
when the ideology of the incumbent president is center-right (4) or right
(5) and 0 otherwise. We measure economic performance using both (the
natural log of) inflation and GDP growth (both lagged one year).14 We ex-
pected that voters would punish incumbents for poor economic growth or
escalating inflation but that retrospective voting would benefit left-wing
candidates only when the incumbent to be blamed is a right-wing pres-
ident. Therefore, we created an interaction term between the economic
variables and right incumbent. We expect Inflation lagged × Right in-
cumbent to have a positive effect on electoral support for left-wing presi-
dential candidates and Growth lagged × Right incumbent to have a nega-
tive effect. Because democratic alternation requires voters not to fear that
the election of the left will hinder democratic consolidation, we controlled
for the duration of democratic experience in each country with the vari-
able age of democracy, which we constructed by summing the years since
democratic rule had been reestablished in each country. We expected this
variable to be positively associated with our dependent variable because,
as democratic experience increases, it should erode the fear of an authori-
tarian return in reaction to a left-wing administration. The sources for all
variables can be found in the appendix.
We also take into account the competing arguments that have been
made regarding the role of income inequality. We include the Gini coef-
13. We included only parties that obtained more than 5 percent of the vote. For more
details, see Appendix B.
14. We acknowledge that growth can have a much longer lag time with respect to its
effects on voters than inflation. To account for this, we tried lagging growth one entire
presidential period and reran our regressions. The results did not change, so we kept the
one-year lag for simplicity’s sake.
P5331.indb 98 10/15/10 1:53:38 PM

ficient that measures income inequality (lagged one year) on the right-
hand side of our equation to test the linear hypothesis that high levels of
inequality lead to greater redistribution (H2). But inequality also enters
as a squared term (income inequality2) to test for the inverted U-shaped
effect that Debs and Helmke (2008) stipulated (H3). We controlled for the
wealth of the country using GDP per capita (lagged one year), as it affects
the possibility of demands for redistribution at any level of inequality.
To test for the effect of globalization on left voting, we followed Stokes
(2009) and employed two different measures of a country’s integration
into international markets. For capital markets integration, we used the
measure of capital-market openness (Capital Openness) created by Chinn
and Ito (2008), the KAOPEN index. This index, based on International
Monetary Fund data, measures the extent of openness in capital account
transactions. To measure the integration into the market for goods and
services, we used the sum of exports and imports of goods and services as
a share of gross domestic product. We took the natural log of this variable
(trade) and lagged it one year. We expect both capital openness (lagged
one year) and trade (lagged one year) to have a positive effect on voting
for the left.
We controlled for the size of the public sector on voting left with a
measure of the government’s final consumption expenditure (spending).
This variable includes all government current expenditures for purchases
of goods and services (including compensation of employees). As Stokes
(2009) has pointed out, this measure can be problematic because not all
spending is carried out by the national government. However, spending
data by subnational governments is not available for many of the coun-
tries under study. Following Kaufman and Segura-Ubiergo (2001) and
Stokes (2009), we checked the robustness of our results by excluding the
two most federal countries of the region: Brazil and Argentina. As with
the other variables, we took the natural log of spending and lagged it one
year.
To measure the effect of party system institutionalization (H5), we used
the variable electoral volatility, which calculated the aggregate vote shift
from one presidential election to another in a single country using the
Pedersen Index (Pedersen 1983).15 Because the region had both left-wing
and right-wing political outsiders, we focused on party system crises un-
der right-wing incumbents, which provided a unique opportunity for left-
wing presidential outsiders to emerge. Hence, we included an interaction
term between electoral volatility and right incumbent. We expected Elec-
15. The Pedersen Index takes values from 0 to 1. A value of 0 indicates absolute stability
of the vote—no parties lose or gain more votes than in the previous election. A value of 1
indicates that all votes accrued to new parties. We included only parties with more than
5 percent of the vote in the calculations of the index.
P5331.indb 99 10/15/10 1:53:38 PM

toral volatility × Right incumbent to have a positive effect on electoral

support for the left.
Finally, we included a lag of the previous left-wing vote (left vote share
lagged) to control for temporal autocorrelation and to inform us of the
baseline level from which left support was deviating. We expected left
vote share lagged to be positively correlated with our dependent variable.
We estimate the model using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression and
robust standard errors to control for clustering in countries (i.e., the pos-
sibility that observations in a country were not independent).16
RESULTS
Table 1 presents the results of a series of OLS regressions where the

outcome variable is the total vote share of left presidential candidates. Col-
umns 1–3 report the results from our main model. Columns 4–10 present
the results of models incorporating alternative explanations (on their own
and compared against our own argument). Finally, column 11 incorpo-
rates all variables together.
We found strong support for our main hypothesis testing the effect of
retrospective voting based on sociotropic hypotheses of economic perfor-
mance. The coefficient on the interaction term Inflation lagged × Right
incumbent was positive and significant across models. This is a strong
indication that higher levels of inflation under right-wing administrations
increase the probability that the left receive a greater percentage of votes.
By contrast, the coefficient on the interaction Growth lagged × Right in-
cumbent has an unexpected positive (though not consistently significant)
sign.17
The finding on inflation is our primary result. Figure 2 shows the ef-
fects of inflation lagged on left vote share, according to the ideology of the
incumbent (based on the coefficients of column 11 in table 2). The darker
16. Some of our observations have zero votes for the left in a given year, which makes the
distribution of the dependent variable to be nonnormal. To account for this zero inflation of
the data, we tried a modified version of the zero-inflated negative binomial (zinb) but this
model produced equivalent results so we present the OLS alternatives. Also, because there
is some concern with running a regression with clustered errors when the number of clus-
ters is so small (see, e.g., Angrist and Pischke 2009), we reran the regression with normal
standard errors. The errors in both models are similar, which suggests almost no residual
unmodeled variation across countries. To confirm, we explicitly modeled the country-level
variance by running a multilevel (hierarchical) model with country random effects and
again found no variation. Moreover, to test for the possibility that the elections in one coun-
try drove results, we excluded, one at a time, each country from the data set and compared
the results with the ones from the full data set. The direction of all the main coefficients and
their significance remained the same.
17. We also ran the models lagging growth by one presidential period as opposed to one
year. Our results were similar.
P5331.indb 100 10/15/10 1:53:38 PM

line represents the effect of inflation lagged on the vote share of left presi-
dential candidates when there is a right-wing incumbent president (4
or 5 in our scale), whereas the lighter line shows the effect of inflation
lagged when the incumbent president is left, center-left, or centrist (1, 2,
or 3). Darker dots correspond to observations with right incumbents, and
lighter dots correspond to nonright incumbents. As the positive slope of
the darker line in figure 2 shows, there is strong evidence that inflation
when the incumbent is right-wing has a positive effect on future left vote
share. In substantive terms, a 1-percentage-point increase in inflation cor-
responds to a 5.1-percentage-point increase in left presidential vote share
when the incumbent is right-wing (significant at p < .01).18 This is sig-
nificant when considering that the mean margin of victory of elections in
our data set (taken from the first round of voting) is roughly 12 percent.
More than one-quarter of first-round contests had a margin of less than
5 percent.
In contrast, the lighter line in figure 2 shows the negative effect of in-
flation lagged on left vote share when the incumbent is not right-wing.
An increase of 1 percentage point in inflation when a center, center-left,
or left incumbent is in power decreases the vote share for the left by
7.9 percentage points. That is, voters react slightly stronger to left-wing
administrations that govern during periods of high inflation than to right-
wing administrations with similar performance. This finding confirms
Remmer’s (2002) argument about left-wing constituencies’ preference for
low inflation—inflation has a large, negative impact on the poor.
Although the contrasting findings on growth and inflation might seem
counterintuitive on first glance, they are supported by a great deal of
the literature, which has found that inflation—rather than growth—has
a strong and direct impact on voters’ calculus. Lora and Olivera (2005)
found strong evidence that the Latin American electorate is especially
sensitive to inflation (as opposed to other economic outcomes). Like us,
they do not find that the electorate punishes the president for growth de-
clines. This suggests that voters as consumers feel the immediate pinch
of higher prices brought on by inflation, whereas the effects of anemic
growth are less immediate and certainly less direct. The differential ef-
fects of growth and inflation also echo Debs and Helmke’s (2008) finding
that Latin American voters punish right-wing incumbents for high infla-
tion but do not reward them for high growth. Roberts and Wibbels (1999)
also found that short-term inflation rather than economic growth affects
support for incumbent presidents.
We did not find statistical support for either hypothesis on income
inequality. The sign of the coefficient on the income inequality variable
18. We also conducted our analysis replacing the right incumbent (4 or 5 on our scale)
variable with a center-right incumbent variable (3, 4, and 5). The results were similar.
P5331.indb 101 10/15/10 1:53:39 PM

1.0
0.8
Incumbent
Right
Presidential left vote share
0.6
0.4
Incumbent
Center or
Left
0.2
0.0
0 2 4 6 8
Inflation lagged (LN)
Figure 2 The Effect of Inflation on Presidential Left Vote Share

Note: We drew the figure using coefficients from the regression results in column 11 of
table 2.
was not consistent across models and was not statistically significant.
The coefficient on the income inequality2 variable also was not statisti-
cally significant. We believe that our findings on inequality contribute to
an emerging literature that questions the relationship between inequal-
ity and electoral support for the left (or redistribution, more generally).
Whereas statistical analyses by scholars such as Lora and Olivera (2005)
have found that there is no systematic relationship between changes in
inequality and anti-incumbent vote swings, in a recent review, Kaufman
(2009) has argued more generally that there is no clear relation between
left vote share and inequality. Survey evidence, controlled case compari-
sons and a review of the types of left demonstrate that it is difficult to
P5331.indb 102 10/15/10 1:53:39 PM

link inequality dynamics with increasing support for—or the diversity

among—left-wing proponents.
We find no statistical support for the hypothesis that relates the grow-
ing left-wing vote in Latin America with increasing volatility, as a proxy
for party system crisis, under right-wing incumbents. Whether or not the
right is in power, volatility has a negative (though not consistently signifi-
cant) effect on the left vote. Finally, we found some weak support for the
globalization argument. Although not entirely consistent across models
and not significant, the effect of trade and capital openness was positive.19
Surprisingly, our control variable measuring public-sector expenditures
also had a positive effect on left vote share.20
In summary, our findings suggest that retrospective voting offers the
strongest explanatory power for the vote share of left-wing presiden-
tial candidates during the longest sustained democratic period in Latin
America. In particular, the effect of retrospective voting—or throwing the
rascals out—is strongly supported by our results on the evaluation of eco-
nomic performance using inflation as an outcome. Because our dependent
variable includes both victorious and defeated candidates, we believe that
cumulative left vote share captures the public mood toward left-wing
electoral options. Hence, our results suggest that Latin American voters
seem to be testing the democratic market of electoral options rather than
being swept up by revolutionary winds.
CONCLUSION: RETROSPECTIVE VOTING, ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE,

AND ACCOUNTABILITY
To conclude, we have some tentative suggestions about the debate on

the left-wing preferences of Latin American voters. Our results regarding
19. Following Stokes (2009), we also ran the models including an interaction term be-
tween capital openness and incumbent right as well as trade openness and incumbent
right (results not shown here). The results for capital openness remained positive (but not
significant) and showed stronger effects when the right was in power. The results on trade
openness demonstrated a nonsignificant negative effect when the right was in power. More
important, running the model with these variables did not affect our main result on the
effect of inflation under right-wing government.
20. For Stokes (2009), spending (as a proxy for the size of the public sector) has a direct
impact on its own. She argues that the electorate turns to the left in response to a downsiz-
ing of the state (especially under right-wing governments). Contrary to our fi ndings, she
finds strong support for that argument. As mentioned earlier, the main problem with this
measure is that a good deal of government spending occurs at the subnational level. For
that reason, we reran the models excluding Argentina and Brazil—the two most fiscally de-
centralized countries in the region. The coefficient on spending remained positive but lost
its significance. Our primary results on the interaction between inflation and right-wing
incumbent remained the same.
P5331.indb 103 10/15/10 1:53:39 PM

P5331.indb 104
Table 1 Explaining Presidential Left Vote
Full
Retrospective Voting Inequality Volatility Globalization Model
I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX X XI
Left vote share lagged 0.69 0.73 0.69 0.71 0.71 0.71 0.75 0.73 0.68 0.65 0.69
[8.95]*** [8.13]*** [9.58]*** [8.05]*** [7.73]*** [7.61]*** [7.81]*** [10.99]*** [6.68]*** [8.42]*** [8.52]***
Age of Democracy 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
[0.51] [0.35] [0.46] [0.28] [0.28] [0.29] [0.44] [0.13] [0.66] [0.76] [0.38]
GDP per capita 0.12 0.10 0.12 0.10 0.10 0.12 0.10 0.11 0.09 0.11 0.11
lagged (LN) [3.14]*** [2.26]** [3.43]*** [2.77]** [2.68]** [3.34]*** [3.07]*** [4.71]*** [2.56]** [3.95]*** [3.47]***
Right incumbent –0.19 0.05 –0.29 –0.27 –0.02 –0.39 0.06 –0.29 –0.41
[2.10]* [0.71] [2.92]*** [2.19]** [0.36] [5.43]*** [1.71] [2.46]** [4.22]***
Inflation lagged (LN) –0.06 0.00 –0.07 –0.06 –0.09 0.01 –0.06 –0.08
[2.34]** [0.18] [2.54]** [1.89]* [5.93]*** [0.55] [2.08]* [3.59]***
Growth lagged –0.01 –0.01 –0.02 –0.02 –0.02 0.00 –0.02 –0.02
[1.80]* [0.56] [2.46]** [2.11]* [4.47]*** [0.38] [2.25]** [4.52]***
Inflation lagged (LN) × 0.10 0.11 0.11 0.13 0.11 0.13
Right inc. [3.14]*** [3.45]*** [2.92]*** [4.91]*** [3.00]*** [4.92]***
Growth lagged × 0.01 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02 0.02
Right inc. [0.37] [1.74] [1.44] [2.63]** [1.88]* [2.49]**
10/15/10 1:53:39 PM
P5331.indb 105
Income Inequality 0.01 0.01 –0.01 –0.03
[1.32] [0.22] [0.22] [0.52]
Income Inequality2 0 0 0
[0.11] [0.29] [0.52]
Volatility –0.46 –0.28 –0.33
[2.40]** [1.46] [1.49]
Volatility × Right inc. 0.47 0.28 0.31
[1.82]* [1.22] [1.29]
Trade lagged (LN) 0.02 0.03 0.04
[0.33] [0.63] [0.96]
Capital openness lagged –0.01 0.00 0.01
[0.29] [0.21] [0.58]
Spending lagged (LN) 0.13 0.11 0.07
[1.76]* [1.82]* [2.26]**
Constant –0.64 –0.75 –0.63 –0.98 -1.14 –0.46 –0.70 –0.50 -1.06 –0.95 –0.10
[1.88]* [1.83]* [1.99]* [2.08]* [0.75] [0.27] [2.35]** [2.62]** [2.05]* [2.48]** [0.06]
Observations 88 88 88 88 88 88 87 87 88 88 87
R-squared 0.61 0.55 0.62 0.54 0.54 0.63 0.58 0.68 0.57 0.64 0.69
Note: Robust t-statistics are in brackets.

*p < .10; **p < . 05; ***p < .01
10/15/10 1:53:39 PM
voter behavior build on the recent public opinion evidence, which does not
find any regionwide move to the left. Even in countries that did witness
a leftward shift, there is no evidence of a dramatic ideological realign-
ment. Instead, Latin American voters seem to be exercising the electoral
options available to them in the new democratic markets of the region.
This Schumpeterian view of democracy, which explains electoral support
for the left as a function of retrospective economic voting, has tremendous
implications in a region of the world where democracy has failed so many
times before. The fact that Latin American citizens can choose alternative
options and continue doing so—regardless of their ideological bent—is a
watershed in the region’s history.
Our findings on retrospective voting echo the earlier findings of Rem-
mer (1991) and Lora and Olivera (2005) about the effect of inflation on
voter’s electoral behavior (and the corresponding lack of effect of eco-
nomic growth). Whereas those authors emphasized inflationary effects
on declines in incumbent vote share, we used retrospective voting to ex-
plain the prospective choice of voters as well. As Fearon (1999) argued,
the free exercise of the vote allows voters both to sanction bad perfor-
mance and to select good governments. Because sanctioning depends on
monitoring, the differential effects of inflation and growth may reflect
the ability of voters to assess real economic effects on prices rather than
on macroeconomic aggregates. Viewed in this light, our results are in
line with the literature on contingent retrospective voting. This literature
emphasizes that the connection between the state of the economy and
electoral outcomes is contingent on voters’ information, cognition, and/
or motivation (Anderson 2007; Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier 2000). In Latin
America, inflation is likely to have an immediate impact on voters’ pocket-
books, whereas information on growth both is more amorphous and may
take time to trickle down to the average voter. Given the deeply skewed
income distribution across the region, it might also be the case that most
citizens do not perceive the effects of a growth slowdown in a uniform
manner.21
Our emphasis on retrospective voting shows that Latin American vot-
ers use the ballot box to make governments accountable and to demand
different policies. The literature on Latin American politics has consis-
tently emphasized that electoral accountability is the primary mechanism
of controlling executives. O’Donnell (1994) famously called attention to
the weakness of horizontal accountability and checks and balances on the
region’s presidents, rendering the vote as the only mechanism to act as
a credible check. Stokes (2001), too, emphasized that, because candidates
21. For example, Benton (2005) has noted that it is doubtful that Latin American voters
feel changes in GDP per capita equally, if at all. She suggests that inflation, unemployment,
and real wages figure more prominently in voters’ minds.
P5331.indb 106 10/15/10 1:53:40 PM

can lie or mislead on the campaign trail about their real policy intentions
once in office, ex post electoral accountability is the only tool available to
Latin American voters to control their governments.
In our view, Latin American voters value the ballot booth both as a
mechanism of accountability to punish bad performance that they can
monitor and as a selection mechanism for choosing alternatives that are
different from the incumbents whom they are sanctioning. Voters’ capac-
ity to replace incumbents who did not perform to expectations with chal-
lengers from the other end of the ideological spectrum suggests that ideol-
ogy is a useful signaling mechanism even in a region where presidential
candidates sometimes switch policy orientation on inauguration.
APPENDIX A
Table A1 Number of Observations, by Country

Number of Country Number of
Country name observations name observations
Argentina 6 Guatemala 6
Bolivia 6 Honduras 7
Brazil 6 Mexico 2
Chile 4 Nicaragua 4
Colombia 8 Panama 4
Costa Rica 8 Paraguay 5
Dominican Republic 9 Peru 7
Ecuador 8 Uruguay 5
El Salvador 4 Venezuela 7
Total 106
Table A2 Presidential Ideology Frequency Distribution

Presidential ideology Freq. % Cum. %
Left 11 10.38 10.38

Center-left 26 24.53 34.91
Center 17 16.04 50.94
Center-right 38 35.85 86.79
Right 14 13.21 100
Total 106 100
P5331.indb 107 10/15/10 1:53:40 PM

Table A3 Presidential Ideology
P5331.indb 108
Left Center-Left Center Center-Right Right
Argentina N. Kirchner 2003 Alfonsin 1983 Menem 1989
C. Kirchner 2007 De la Rua 1999 Menem 1995
Bolivia Morales Zamora 1989 Paz Estensoro 1985 Banzer 1997
2005 Sanchez de Lozada 1993
Sanchez de Lozada 2002
Brazil Lula 2002 Cardoso 1994 Sarney 1985 Collor de Melo 1989
Lula 2006 Cardoso 1998
Chile Lagos 2000 Aylwin 1989
Bachelet 2006 Frei 1993
Colombia Turbay Ayala 1978 Betancur 1982
Barco 1986 Pastrana 1998
Gaviria 1990 Uribe 2002
Samper 1994 Uribe 2006
Costa Rica Monge Alvarez 1982 Carazo Odio 1978
Arias 1986 Calderon 1990
Figueres 1994 Rodriguez 1998
Arias 2006 P. de Espriella 2002
Dominican Guzmán 1978 F. Reyna 1996 Balaguer 1986
Republic Blanco 1982 F. Reyna 2004 Balaguer 1990
M. Domínguez 2000 F. Reyna 2008 Balaguer 1994
Ecuador Correa 2006 R. Aguilera 1979 Mahuad 1998 Febes Cordero 1984
Borja 1988 Gutiérrez 2002 Duran 1992
Bucaram 1996
El Salvador Christiani 1989
Calderon 1994
Flores Pérez 1999
Saca 2004
10/15/10 1:53:40 PM
Guatemala Álvaro Colom 2007 Cerezo Arévalo 1985 Serrano Elías 1990 Portillo 1999
Arzu 1995 Berger 2003
P5331.indb 109
Honduras Suazo Córdoba 1981 Callejas 1989
Azcona Hoyo 1985 Maduro 2001
Reina 1993
Flores 1997
Zelaya 2005
Mexico Fox 2000
Calderón 2006
Nicaragua Ortega 2006 Chamorro 1990 Alemán 1996
Bolaños 2001
Panama Torrijos 2004 P. Balladares 1994 Endara 1989
Moscoso 1999
Paraguay Lugo 2008 Rodrigues 1989
Wasmosy 1993
Cubas Grau 1998
Duarte Frutos 2003
Peru García 1985 Belaunde Terry 1980
Fujimori 1990
Fujimori 1995
Fujimori 2000
Toledo 2001
García 2006
Uruguay Vásquez 2004 Sanguinetti 1984 Lacalle 1989
Sanguinetti 1994
Battle 1999
Venezuela Chávez 1998 Lusinchi 1983 Caldera 1993 Herrera Campins 1978
Chávez 2000 Pérez 1998
Chávez 2006
10/15/10 1:53:40 PM
Table A4 Descriptive Statistics

Variable Obs. Mean Std. Dev. Min Max
Left vote share 106 0.36 0.25 0 1
Age of democracy 106 17.09 13.51 0 57.00
Capital openness lagged 106 0.15 1.58 –1.81 2.53
GDP per capita lagged (LN) 100 8.60 0.46 7.50 9.44
Growth lagged 106 3.15 4.34 –13.38 12.82
Growth lagged × Right incumbent 90 2.21 2.81 –2.26 12.82
Income inequality lagged 106 50.88 5.81 36.85 65.35
Income inequality lagged2 106 2622.16 591.47 1357.92 4270.62
Inflation lagged (LN) 106 2.68 1.63 –1.02 8.47
Inflation lagged (LN) × Right incumbent 90 1.16 1.50 –0.94 7.56
Left vote share lagged 88 0.34 0.25 0 1
Right Incumbent 90 0.54 0.50 0 1
Spending lagged (LN) 105 2.42 0.35 1.41 3.29
Trade lagged (LN) 106 3.95 0.51 2.75 5.25
Volatility 89 0.22 0.13 0.01 0.56
Volatility × Right incumbent 88 0.13 0.15 0 0.56
APPENDIX B
Variable Definitions and Sources

Ideology: To code ideology, we evaluated each presidential candidate
according to a five-point scale, where 1 = left and 5 = right. The scores
are from Coppedge (1997) and its various extensions, including Huber,
Mustillo, and Stephens (2005); Murillo and Martinez-Gallardo (2007) and
Murillo (2009); Weisehomeier and Benoit (2007); and consultation with
country experts (Ana María Bejarano, Lucas González, Flavia Freidenberg,
Steven Levitsky, David Samuels, Andrew Schrank, and Jorge Leon Trujillo).
We coded personalistic parties with no clear ideology as well as parties
coded in Coppedge (1997) as “unknown/other” as missing observations.
Dependent Variable
Left vote share: Total presidential vote share obtained by all candi-
dates from the left (1) and center-left (2) in the first round of elections. We
included only parties that obtained more than 5 percent of the vote. Data
adapted from Murillo (2009), Stokes (2009), Nohlen (2005), and the Political
Database of the Americas (Georgetown University).
Independent Variables
Age of democracy: Number of years since the return to democracy. The
year of the first democratic election was considered year 0. From Freedom
House (2009) and Polity IV Project (Marshall and Jaggers 2008).
P5331.indb 110 10/15/10 1:53:41 PM

Capital Openness lagged: Capital-market openness measure devel-

oped by Chinn and Ito (2008), lagged one year. Index of the extensity of
capital controls based on the information from the IMF’s Annual Report on
Exchange Arrangements and Exchange Restrictions (AREAER).
Growth lagged: Growth in the GDP (annual percentage), lagged one
year. From World Development Indicators (2009).
Incumbent ideology: Ideology of the incumbent president at the time
of the presidential election. See “Ideology” for details on coding.
Inequality lagged: Gini coefficient from the UN University’s World
Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER). Debs and
Helmke (2008) constructed the variable by taking the raw inequality mea-
sure from the closest year before the election year in each country. If there
were no measures available prior to the election, they took the closest fu-
ture measure. If there was more than one measure for a given country
election year, they took the average.
Inflation lagged (ln): Natural log of inflation lagged one year. From
World Development Indicators (2009).
Right incumbent: Indicator variable that takes the value 1 when the
ideology of the incumbent president is 4 (center-right) or 5 (right), and 0
otherwise.
Spending lagged (ln): Natural log of general government final con-
sumption expenditure, lagged one year, and including all government
current expenditures for purchases of goods and services (including com-
pensation of employees). It also includes most expenditure on national
defense and security, but excludes government military expenditures that
are part of government capital formation. From World Development Indi-
cators (2009).
Trade lagged (ln): Natural log of the sum of exports and imports of
goods and services measured as a share of GDP, lagged one year. From
World Development Indicators (2009).
Volatility: Variable that takes values between 0 and 1, calculated by
adding the absolute value of change in the vote percentage gained or
lost by each party from one election to the next, and dividing by two. A
value of 0 indicates absolute stability of the vote—no parties lose or gain
more votes than in the previous election. A value of 1 indicates that all
votes went to new parties. We included only parties with more than 5
percent of the vote in the calculations of the index (for details, see Ped-
ersen 1983).
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P5331.indb 114 10/15/10 1:53:42 PM

T H E E AG L E A N D T H E S E R P E N T O N
THE SCREEN
The State as Spectacle in Mexican Cinema
Daniel Chávez
University of Virginia
Abstract: Recent studies of the history of Mexican cinema continue to speak of the
complex relations between the state and the film industry, and the most frequently
analyzed aspects tend to be the same: the reach and forms of censorship, as well as
the financial dependence on the state. To broaden this perspective, I propose a clas-
sification of cinematic discourses that represent the relations between film charac-
ters and state powers. I discuss four basic modes of representation that, determined
by historical and economic circumstances, reflect and mediate the attitudes and
dispositions of viewers toward the political regime. For each mode, I discuss a se-
quence in a paradigmatic film, analyzing visual and ideological aspects in relation
to the political moment at the time of the film’s release. Finally, I argue that, despite
the resurgence of the Mexican cinema and a more critical tone in its approach to
state institutions, fictional films still rest on indirect and allegorical representations
of recent events. This is due to the uncertainty of the prolonged and still-incomplete
transition to institutional democracy in Mexico.
For decades, one of the most common subjects in the literature on Mexi-
can national cinema has been the tight relationship between the state and
the film industry (Mora 1982, 59, 69; Noble 2005, 13–22; Paranaguá 2003,
221–225; Ramírez Berg 1992, 40, 44; Sánchez 2002). A general assumption
in most of this criticism is that cinematographic expression has frequently
evinced the manipulation or direct control of the government because of
the economic dependence of this sector on the financial backing of the
state. However, from a historical and comparative perspective, it is clear
that this situation is not alien to most metropolitan film industries, includ-
ing those of the United States, Germany, and France, which have been
financially rescued, enticed to collaborate in war efforts, or managed by
state institutions at some point in their history (Cook 2000, 11–14; Elsaesser
1989, 18–27; Williams 1992, 278, 395). Thus, however defining this tight col-
laboration could have been for Mexican cinema, it is not exactly a pro-
ductive gesture to insist on overanalyzing its dependency on the state.
Furthermore, from this traditional perspective, the possibility of reading
and theorizing the relative autonomy achieved in the production of im-
ages in certain key historical moments is less likely to surface or might be
ignored.
P5331.indb 115 10/15/10 1:53:42 PM

To circumvent the shortfalls of some of these interpretations, I propose

the exploration of Mexican cinematographic discourses from a different
point of view.1 Breaking with the tendency that seeks to establish when
and how the state fosters or controls the production of images, I analyze
the varieties and evolution of cinematic representations of the state on the
screen.2 Specifically, I focus on fiction film discourse to search for represen-
tations of practices of power and the deployment of historical narratives
that support or question official versions of history. This new perspective
aims to shed light on what the movie screens were really able to represent
or reveal about the relationship between the state and cinematographic
discourse and, more important, what spectators could see or learn about
their own relationship with state institutions on the screen.
Since the introduction of sound, and especially since the inception of
the golden age of cinema (1935–1955), it is possible to differentiate four
constitutive discourses used to visually represent the Mexican state.
The emergence of these discourses is politically and historically deter-
mined. However, once they become part of the repertoire of cinemato-
graphic field they are added to the possible visualizations already pres-
ent. Thus, the following categories are chronologically organized by their
time of inception, but through the years, some of these discourses have
acquired a residual character that has allowed them to coexist with the
emerging ones.
In a first instance, there is the mystifying-indigenista discourse, with
images reproducing the aesthetic principles supported and promoted by
governmental institutions and frequently in tune with the main tenets of
the ideological apparatus of the revolutionary state (1920–1940), includ-
ing a dogmatic deployment of national narratives based on the principles
of indigenismo and mestizaje (Bonfil Batalla 1994, 166; Florescano 2005, 314,
319; Lomnitz 1992, 277, 279; Miller 1999, 138, 155).3 In this sense, many films
1. I use the concept of cinematographic/cinematic discourse to designate not only the or-
ganization of the five different codes (image, sound, music, speech, text) in a film or group
of films but also the form in which characters and narration represent the relations of power
of the society in which a film is produced (Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-Lewis 1992).
2. From the many possible options, I use a working definition of state derived from a
contemporary relational perspective. In this article, the state is a social process structuring
human communities with specific forms of domination related to social and capital re-
production. It presupposes individual, noncoercive subordination to a social arrangement
with asymmetric power bonds but that ensures vital activity and material production for
all. In its institutional expression, the state includes provisions for political, material, social,
and economic reproduction of a social formation (see Roux 2005). In the article, the word
state refers to these processes and to the institutions that make possible its existence. I use
the word government when referring to specific regimes, characters, or personalities related
to governmental tasks represented in the films.
3. The official national narrative after 1920 affirms that the deepest roots of the nation
are located in the glorious indigenous past that the Spanish Conquest destroyed. The true
P5331.indb 116 10/15/10 1:53:42 PM

THE EAGLE AND THE SERPENT ON THE SCREEN 117
of this era incorporated elements of the 1920s’ and 1930s’ visual rhetoric
that the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and José
Clemente Orozco had introduced (Hershfield 1999a, 199b). Films marked
by this telluric nationalism have as their precursors silent historical epics
like Manuel Contreras Torres’s De raza azteca (1921) and Guillermo Calles’s
El indio yaqui (1926) and Raza de bronce (1927) (García Riera 1998, 57–59). The
footage Sergei Eisenstein took in his eighteen-month visit to Mexico in
1930–1932 gave a new impulse to the muralist and cinematic romanticiza-
tion of the past and the present agrarian indigenous cultures and to the
revolutionary struggle for their paternalist redemption (Coffey 2002; De
la Vega Alfaro 1997; De los Reyes 2006; Podalsky 1993). In the sound era,
early examples with Eisensteinian and muralist influence included Carlos
Navarro’s Janitzio (1934), Fred Zinnemann’s Mexican film Redes (1936), and
several of the early Emilio Fernández’s films (García Riera 1998, 93; see
also Coria 2005).
At the time of the decline of the golden age of Mexican cinema, by the
early 1950s and all through the 1960s, many popular films disseminated
what I consider the second discourse of cinematic representations of the
state. Through a series of generic conventions and script formulas, the
picaresque-folklorizing discourse dealt indirectly with the shortcom-
ings and the gradual erosion of the revolutionary legacy (cf. Hernández
Rodríguez 1999). An extensive complacency toward the increasingly au-
thoritarian and paternalist practices of the government and its “modern”
institutions marked the films categorized in this second discursive mode.
Urban melodrama, ranchera comedy, and especially urban comic films
by the three most important figures of the genre—Cantinflas (Si yo fuera
diputado, 1952), Tin Tan (Hay muertos que no hacen ruido, 1946), and Clavil-
lazo (El genial detective Peter Perez, 1952)—shared a common pattern of end-
lessly repeated jokes and tacit references to the corruption of government
officials without ever formulating a direct critique of state institutions
(cf. Monsiváis 1999).
The third mode of visual representation of the state emerged by the
mid-1970s in part as a reaction to the tumultuous political events of 1968,
which along with a crisis at the box office, provoked a change in the mode
of film production and in the tone and reach of state representations. This
third twist in cinematographic discourse coexists with the previous ones
but challenges the outdated melodramatic and comic repertoire with a
style veering toward a form of denunciatory realism. Stories and charac-
Mexican identity emerges from the hybridization of these Spanish and indigenous roots
in the mestizo people, who have created their own history through successive struggles
of liberation and affirmation (e.g., independence, reform). All these elements are linked
and acquired their final expression in the politics and culture that the revolutionary state
(1920–1940) fostered (see Bonfil Batalla 1994).
P5331.indb 117 10/15/10 1:53:42 PM

ters in these spectacles reflected the growing disappointment that large

sectors of the public felt toward Mexican society in general and the gov-
ernment of the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in particular.
Films in this category include especially those produced by young direc-
tors: Raúl Araiza’s Cascabel (1976), Felipe Cazals’s El apando (1976) and Las
Poquianchis (1976), and Cadena perpetua by Arturo Ripstein (1979), among
others.
Finally, by the end of the 1990s—on the verge of the long political
transition—the most recent mode of representation I analyze deploys
what I call a demystifying realist discourse that playfully, and sometimes
sarcastically, recasts previous conventionalisms and discourses with de-
constructive or parodic intentions. Here, Luis Estrada’s La ley de Herodes
(1999) is paradigmatic and opens the door for other dark comedies
and melodramas like Fernando Sariñana’s Todo el poder (1999), Pachito Rex
(2001) by Fabián Hoffman, and Conejo en la luna (2002) by Jorge Ramírez
Suárez.
Throughout the history of film in Mexico, these four cinematographic
discourses representing the state are kept alive in the collective imagi-
nation by the nostalgic rehash of some of its themes in successive films
but especially by periodic reruns of the cinematic legacy in television and
cable networks. Thus, even if their actuality as socially relevant narra-
tives has been surpassed, certain tones and perspectives of the older dis-
courses still reappear as distant references or become common substrata
for the parodies of the postmodern gyrations of contemporary cinematic
expression.
ANXIETY OF REPRESENTATION AND THE MYSTIFYING-INDIGENISTA DISCOURSE
Aside from some antecedents of official intervention in film production

and exhibition during the silent era, one can argue that the actual involve-
ment of the state in the fictional representation of national narratives and
political practices on the screens starts with the dawning of the talkies
(cf. De los Reyes 1996, 233; Schroeder 2008). A notable example of this is
the first superproduction of Mexican cinema, Fernando de Fuentes’s Vá-
monos con Pancho Villa (1935), a film that received not only material and
logistic support from the army but also financial backing from the gov-
ernment of General Lázaro Cárdenas, to the point of rescuing the produc-
ers from bankruptcy given the poor return at the box office (Mraz 1997).
Clearly, the legitimization of the image of the Mexican Revolution was at
stake, and the government was interested in the enterprise. Through this
financial intervention, it seems safe to assume that there was already a
clear perception from the part of governmental officials of the high sym-
bolic value of film as an instrument for the diffusion of ideologies and for
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the dissemination of heuristic models for the reception of recent national

history.4
The first visual discourse for the representation of the Mexican state
on the screen emerges under these conditions in the early 1930s. The
mystifying-indigenista moment of Mexican film coincides with the era of
reaffirmation of the social imaginary of the Mexican Revolution. Its images
are committed to the recuperation and mystification of the indigenous
and mestizo roots of the nation. Associations of race and land with an in-
domitable and atavist identity, with physical strength, and with primitive
beauty derived from Aztec or other indigenous heritage are some of the
aspects highlighted in the characters and stories filmed under this per-
spective (Coffey 2002). Also, as most of the official activity and hegemonic
ideology of that time, this was a cinema of modernization in which the
rural environment was subject to the transforming will and direct mate-
rial intervention of the state.
In general, in those films that actually portray high-placed officials
or mention state institutions, there is often an emphasis on a symbolic
closeness between everyday people and the government agents. These
spectacles give visual expression to the official Bonapartism of that era.5
Frequently, in these images the president (or other officials) and the peas-
ant in the cornfield or the common man in the big city are represented
as driven by the same nationalist sentiments and social goals. However,
reality was much less harmonious. The construction of a complicated bu-
reaucracy controlled by the highest officials and the cult of the personality
of the president, as well as the accelerated formation of a new bourgeoi-
sie, were widening the social and economic gap between the citizens and
their representatives.
For all practical purposes, the period of Lázaro Cárdenas (1934–
1940) was the last important moment of revolutionary transformation
(Roux 2005, 209). The agrarian reform and the nationalization of the oil
industry—beyond their justification or real value as successful economic
projects—paved the way for the eventual corporatization of the peasant
4. Cinematic representations of the confrontation had little success during the 1920s
(De los Reyes 1993, 230–234). However, during the Cárdenas administration (1934–1940)
governmental institutions encouraged efforts to present and promote a sanitized narrative
of the Mexican Revolution in textbooks and films that recuperated and elevated figures like
Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata (Coffey 2002; Gilbert 2003; Katz 1998, 391)
5. In its classic definition, Bonapartism is the political practice of governing with the
ideology of one class while serving the interests of another in relative autonomy of both
(Bensussan and Labica 1999). In this case, Mexican governments after 1940 have identified
themselves with the causes and ideology of the peasantry and the workers, but for the most
part, they have served the interests of the industrial and financial classes while retaining
increasingly autocratic powers.
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and labor movements under the banner of the official party, the Partido de
la Revolución Mexicana (renamed PRI in 1946) (Roux 2005, 213). By 1940,
not without agitation and resistance from conservative sectors, workers
and peasants had received—at least nominally—the first installments of
the promises of the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920. As compensation
for these acts of economic justice, the state-organized corporatist regime
would exact from the people—by coercion or connivance—the authority
and legitimacy to support its increasingly authoritarian and corrupting
practices (Aguirre and De la Peña 2006).
But the real turning point in the political and economic history of the
postrevolutionary state would come with the office of Miguel Alemán
from 1946 to 1952 (Meyer 2002). By that time, the perceived success of the
import substitution industrialization strategy for development had made
the Mexican political and economic elite believe that the moment of mod-
ernization and full capitalist transformation had finally arrived. From
this point on, state relations were molded around an intricate network
of clientelism, leadership subordination, and under-the-table negotiations
with opposition groups. If those practices failed, the authority recurred
periodically to police or—if need be—army repression (Aguirre and De la
Peña 2006, 405, 439; Maldonado 2005; Roux 2005, 214–218). This complex ar-
rangement was built into the political process and ritually renewed every
six years. Not surprisingly, the cinematographic sector was also invited
to participate in the economic and political transformation of the state. A
support system for the advancement of the film industry was put in place,
most notably a state-sponsored distribution company, and in 1947, the na-
tionalized Banco Cinematográfico which was in charge of funding the
production of films (Fein 1999; García Riera 1998, 151; Sánchez 2002, 90).
The intricate reactionary situation of this era can be read against the
grain in the images of an important film of the Alemán presidential pe-
riod. The 1948 film Río Escondido, directed by Emilio (Indio) Fernández
and photographed by Gabriel Figueroa, melodramatically celebrates the
everyday effects of revolutionary change at the precise moment that state
institutions were about to neutralize or reverse some of the most impor-
tant rights that worker and peasant unions had acquired in the national
reconstruction process (from 1920 to 1940) (cf. Fein 1999).6 In other words,
while the monumental construction of highways, hydroelectric plants,
stadiums, and airports is presented as direct fruit of the revolution, the
6. Although there are numerous earlier films displaying the mystifying-indigenista dis-
course, I have chosen to analyze Río Escondido for the international recognition the film
received and because it belongs to a group of paradigmatic films in this category made
by the well-known production team Emilio Fernández (director), Gabriel Figueroa (photo-
grapher), and Mauricio Magdaleno (screenwriter), and because it is widely available on
VHS and DVD.
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demands to achieve true democracy and the application of effective poli-

cies for social justice were indefinitely postponed.
Despite this overcast panorama in Mexican politics, in Río Escondido,
Figueroa’s camera presents an open romanticization of the activities of the
national government. Right from the start, the opening and title sequences
prominently display national symbols etched in engravings inspired by
Rivera’s murals, and the soundtrack, specially prepared by noted com-
poser Silvestre Revueltas, establishes an unequivocal epic tone with re-
sounding percussions in a symphonic march. Then, the first sequence of
the actual film opens with a classic Figueroa frame composition: a high
angle panoramic of the zócalo (national mall) with distant clouds making
the background of a gigantic Mexican flag soaring in front of the National
Palace.7 The action moves inside the national buildings as a would-be ru-
ral teacher Rosaura (María Félix) rushes for an official audience with the
president. As she passes through the hallways and conference rooms of
the colonial palace, Rivera’s frescoes “speak” in voice-off to the teacher,
who in awe admires the monuments declared by the voice (of the na-
tion?) as belonging to her and the people as “true inheritors of Mexico’s
history.”
Almost at the end of the first sequence, President Alemán’s shadowed
profile appears standing proudly in an eye-level close-up (figure 1). It is
precisely this structuring shadow-absence that directs the individual des-
tinies of the characters of the film—and the spectator must assume—of
the Mexican people in general, no matter how far from the center of power
they might be located.8 It was the president himself who called on Rosaura
to help him in the national crusade for education. Humbly, on the verge
of tears but not revealing her chronic heart condition—of which the spec-
tators learn in the previous scene—the teacher accepts her mission. This
highly emotional and acquiescent attitude toward the presidential figure
is perhaps among the first cinematic renditions of the increasingly presi-
dentialist penchant of PRI governments.9
7. In her work Gabriel Figueroa: Nuevas perspectivas (2008), Higgins discusses in detail the
artistry and impact of Figueroa’s technique in relation to the cinematography of his time.
8. I use the concept of spectator(s) to designate the subject or subjects who, having previ-
ous and diverse ideological baggage and aesthetic experiences, confront the images of a
film and are in turn interpellated by the cinematic apparatus (Stam et al. 1992; Mayne 1993,
80–86). My comments assume that the social and political circumstances prevalent at the
time of release of the films analyzed here conditioned the Mexican spectators. Accordingly,
I offer one, sometimes two, possible interpretations that some spectators could have made
of the scenes discussed here.
9. During and since the Alemán years, the Presidential Press Office has strictly managed
the president’s image. Furthermore, it became customary for newspapers and illustrated
magazines to run photo essays flattering and praising the president and his political entou-
rage as if they were film stars (see Mraz 2001).
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Figure 1 Rural teacher Rosaura (María Félix) with the presidential shadow in Río Es-
condido (Emilio Fernández, 1948).
When Rosaura finally arrives at her remote teaching post, the visual
composition establishes a strong contrast between local and central power.
In the first sequence at the rural village, the local cacique and municipal
president, Don Regino, demands to have a photo like the one “taken of
mi general Pancho Villa when he entered Torreón.” The cronies associated
with this farcical despot are shown in a medium shot aligned to mark
the depth of field and occupying the deserted space of the town’s central
plaza. In this site that was supposed to be devoted to civic assembly, his
three subordinates attentively observe Don Regino savagely handling a
black stallion. In the reaction shots, directly opposing this group but fill-
ing the frame in a similar way, one can also see three women dressed in
black watching the horseman in complete silence.
The next shots in this scene—alternating among the cacique, the thugs,
the women, and Rosaura—underline the other purpose of the improvised
spectacle. The authority not only is posing for a photo but also is regi-
menting the gaze of men and women who are in turn construed as mere
spectators in a theatrical reenactment of power relations. Their passivity
and complicity toward the violent spectacle prefigure how, in this town,
men and women—as the black stallion—are obliged to endure the moral,
P5331.indb 122 10/15/10 1:53:43 PM

corporal, and sexual abuse of Don Regino and his clan. Clearly, the good
people of Río Escondido cannot expect the mediation or intervention of
other powers of the state, such as the judicial or legislative branches, be-
cause they are not even mentioned. It is only the teacher Rosaura and
Felipe (Fernando Fernández), the doctor, the two figures representing
modernization, visually invested with the symbols and authority of the
central government in the previous scenes, who can effectively oppose the
despotic power of Don Regino.
The heavy ideological hand of the script reduces the conflict between
central (modern-civil) and local (irrational-revolutionary) power to a con-
frontation of good versus evil.10 Granted, this reductionist view served
mostly a dramatic purpose in the film. Outside the theaters, everyday
power relations in small towns were not as simple. The negotiation of po-
litical authority and federal intervention was more complex and nuanced
than this, with traditional peasant or oligarchic groups eagerly compet-
ing for—and sometimes against—the legitimizing symbols and material
benefits of the modernizing political and economic forces from the center
(Lomnitz 1992, 143–150; Nugent and Alonso 1994, 232). But in Fernández’s
film, in its eagerness to promote the redemption of the indigenous people
through state intervention (e.g., education, health care), the images are so
biased against the local power that resistance to central authority is quali-
fied as criminal. In one of his bouts of rage, Don Regino dares to challenge
the presidential authority directly: “Here, there is no other president but
me,” he proclaims.
Ironically, in the current political system, the power of Don Regino and
the power of “el señor Presidente” followed the same authoritarian and
patrimonialist principles (Meyer 2005). Under the PRI governments, the
will of the head of state had extensive reach and was considered absolute
in some circles (Krauze 1997, 110). However, the film exalts the actions
of the federal executive power and condemns those of the local authori-
ties, despite that the former was effectively the basis and support of the
whole system. In this way, the cinematographic representation of the state
in Río Escondido ended up veiling the internal mechanisms of Mexican
authoritarianism.
Although under a less Manichaean light, this mystifying-indigenista
mode of representation of the relationship between the people and the
state is at work in many films of the golden age. Productions with some
variations of this visual and ideological construction include other fea-
10. Although Villa’s historical persona never ceased to be popular among certain sec-
tors, and this admiration was expressed in newspapers, novels, comics, and journals, a
full official rehabilitation of his figure proved controversial. It was not until 1966 that the
Mexican Congress fi nally inscribed his name in golden letters at its memorial wall (Katz
1998, 392–395).
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tures by Emilio Fernández—Flor silvestre (1943), María Candelaria (1944),

and Maclovia (1948)—and later works by Roberto Gavaldón, such as El
rebozo de Soledad (1952), and Ismael Rodríguez’s Tizoc (1952), among oth-
ers. The action in many of these films is situated before the Revolution.
This chronological substitution helped avoid offending any contempo-
rary sensibilities and safely attributes the racist and classist “bad side” of
power to the “oppressive and obscurantist” Porfirista dictatorship. None-
theless, by the mid-1950s, with the partial success of modernization and
constant efforts for urbanization, and once the legacy of the Revolution
was extensively commodified and demagogically instrumentalized in the
official rhetoric, the operability of the mystifying-indigenista discourse
decreased.
The material aspect and demographics of the country changed rapidly
after 1940 (García Martínez 2004, 95). It was the turn of urban narratives
to deliver ideological conformity to the people following the developmen-
talist designs of the state. Urban, everyday heroes were celebrated in the
melodramas starring young male leads such as David Silva and Pedro
Infante. The comedies and melodramas of this period would recuperate
and elevate the figure of poor, honest ordinary people of the city neigh-
borhood, instead of the indigenous campesino paternalistically portrayed
in productions set in rural environments. Certainly, the relationship be-
tween the urban characters—already transformed by the modernizing
efforts of the state—and the government officials is less transparent. But
“honest public servants,” usually as poor as the film heroes, always up-
held the principle of authority. The exploiters were then some member
of an unscrupulous and retrograde rich family or a bad apple in the of-
ficial sector. These dramatic and ideological elements reappeared with
variations, in Rodríguez’s Nosotros los pobres series (1948–1953), as well as
in the social melodramas starring David Silva and Arturo de Córdoba
(cf. Hernández Rodríguez 1999).
By 1955 and throughout the 1960s, film production in Mexico witnessed
a process of quality decline. Hollywood, once again at full production,
lost its interest in incentivizing Mexican cinema and its spectacles gradu-
ally regained screen time dominance. The Cinematographic Bank sup-
ported the cronyism of the few standing Mexican production and exhibi-
tion firms, thus allowing monopolistic control over the market by a small
number of investors (De la Vega 1999; Sánchez 2002, 91). Commercialism
and formulaic scripts took over the screens. Only occasional independent
productions would shake Mexican cinema out of its lethargic state in the
following fifteen years. However, one of the formulas developed earlier
during this era had the seeds of a successful discourse of lighthearted
criticism of certain state institutions. The second mode of visual discourse
to represent the Mexican state was also born during the golden age but
became dominant only after the decline of this period.
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LAUGHING AROUND THE STATE: THE PICARESQUE-FOLKLORIZING DISCOURSE
In his seminal work Fenomenología del relajo, the Mexican philosopher

Jorge Portilla (1918–1963) aimed to define some aspects of modern Mexi-
can identities. In this regard, Portilla highlighted and extensively ana-
lyzed what he saw as a constitutive lack of seriousness toward some dis-
courses and values. He thought the condition was part of a generalized
strategy of the Mexican people to avoid frustration and confrontation.
Some of the tactics displayed in this symbolic displacement of conflict
included humorous games, double entendres, rambunctious or theatri-
cal acts of evasion, and verbal excess that he recognized in the practice
of relajo (goofing off): “The significance or sense of ‘relajo’ is to suspend
seriousness; this is to say, suspend or annihilate the subject’s adhesion to
a [philosophical] value posed to his freedom” (Portilla 1984, 18).11 For Por-
tilla, relajo is displayed through three discernible moments: (1) a displace-
ment of attention; (2) the assumption of a position of distance toward the
proposed value, and (3) a specific action deploying gestures, words, and
so on, by which the individual invites others to join her or him in the act
of distancing from the confronted value. In my opinion, Portilla’s herme-
neutic analysis described with accuracy the interaction of the individual
with state institutions and state officials in films by the comedian Mario
Moreno “Cantinflas.”
The deployment of this mode of representation can be traced back to
the last sequence of one of the earliest Cantinflas classics: Ahí está el detalle
(Juan Bustillo Oro, 1938). The picaresque do-it-all character Mario Moreno
plays is accused of killing a known brigand by the name of Bobby. Fol-
lowing the structure of a comedy of errors, the spectator knows that there
are two victims by the same name: an extortionist and a house dog. In the
first sequence of the film, at the behest of the house maid, Cantinflas has
indeed killed the animal and openly admits to it before the court. Inexpli-
cably, in the courtroom, everybody thinks of him as an unrepentant and
cynical assassin because of the mistaken identity of the victims. Trying
to defend his actions, with a mixture of significant key legal terms and
half concepts tossed in the middle of incomplete phrases with syncopated
syntax, Cantinflas ends up amusing the jury, judge, and councilors. The
logic of relajo is applicable here. The camera dwells on medium shots of
the accused to foreground his body language and then cuts to general
shots of the court—as if it were a theatrical audience—to reveal the effects
of his disruptive acts and words (figure 2). Cantinflas’s verbal gymnastics
and comic presence effectively distract the judge and the jury from their
work and redirect the attention of the public on both sides of the screen
toward his performance. His lack of respect for the seriousness and values
11. My translation.
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Figure 2 Cantinflas disrupts a trial in Ahí está el detalle (Juan Bustillo Oro, 1938).
of the court are evident through his indiscriminate verbal sparring with
the people’s attorney, his public defender, and by insistently disrupting
the judge’s control of the court room. This situation ends up distancing
everybody from the legal protocol, thus thwarting the semiosis of legal
discourse and the effective application of judicial due process. By the
end of the sequence, the judge, the people’s part, and the defense mimic
and reproduce Cantinflas’s speech acts and effectively participate in
cantinfleo—as this form of discourse is officially termed in Spanish lan-
guage dictionaries (see Stavans 1998). Through these tactics, clearly fol-
lowing the three stages of relajo, the scene humorously subverts a trial,
one of the most important moments for the materialization of the legal
system and the actualization of judiciary practices, both fundamental ele-
ments of the state reproduction process.
But the effect is momentary. As it happens in many comedies, relief ar-
rives soon enough while the injustice of societal rules stays intact, albeit
this seems to hurt less when all are laughing about it. Apparently, it was
not of the jury’s concern that the authority has unjustly accused a man
of murder lacking the necessary evidence or without the police conduct-
ing even an elemental search of facts. It is also remarkable that the jury
was ready to sentence to death an illiterate and destitute man without the
means to cooperate in his legitimate defense. Outside the theater, similar
P5331.indb 126 10/15/10 1:53:44 PM

irregularities in the judicial due process were so frequently making the

headlines in the daily press and in the goriest pages of yellow journalism
that these situations in the film might have seemed “natural” for many
spectators (cf. De los Reyes 1993, 79).
Throughout the four decades after its inception in the late 1930s, the
picaresque figure central to this mode of state representation would as-
sume different forms and, in time, touch riskier and grimmer contexts. By
the 1970s and 1980s, the innocuous and endearing characters of Cantin-
flas’s comedies were transformed into pimps and alcoholics in sexploita-
tion brothel melodramas and comedies of ficheras (hookers) or became
minor drug dealers and petty criminals in fronterizo B movies (Iglesias
Prieto 2000; Sánchez 2002, 179).12 In some of these films, the main charac-
ter could also be a concerned citizen motivated by revenge or could be-
come an iteration of a social bandit of urban or rural origin (Aviña 2004,
231; Benamou 2009).13 Language turns toward foul forms of address and
generously displays albur, a form of verbal innuendo and gender aggres-
sion that effectively substitutes the florid tactics of cantinfleo (cf. Pilcher
2001, 10).
One possible explanation for the long-lasting popularity of these films
among Mexican audiences, and specifically among the population on the
U.S.-Mexico borderlands, is that by challenging the hypocritical appro-
priation of moral values and national symbols by state officials, and by
standing against the exploitative practices of the repressive state appara-
tus (e.g., police, border patrol), the pícaro/petty drug dealer as a new social
bandit acquired a transgressive character that enhanced his or her appeal
among the marginalized Mexican and Mexican American spectatorship
of the 1970s and 1980s (Benamou 2009). Simulation, double entendre, and
sexual innuendos as symbolic acrobatics helped the transient individual
get even or, better yet, take revenge against a political system based on
impunity, bribery, and nepotism. These films offered an imaginary relief
from the increasing anxieties suffered under an institutional arrangement
firmly encroached on the people and that was invariably on the side of
the rich and powerful. Whatever the context, the labor of the pícaro had
the same limited objective, to circumvent the obstacles and impose his
or her desire or will, and to take physical or symbolic revenge on state
officials. Never a real protest or a concerted social reaction or political
opposition against the whole regime is shown as an option in these pi-
quant barroom tales. Nonetheless, the need to circulate representations of
12. Films defining the fichera genre include two features by Miguel M. Delgado: Bellas de
noche (1975) and Las ficheras (Bellas de noche 2) (1977). Delgado directed most of Cantinflas’s
films after El gendarme desconocido (1941).
13. The social-avenger figure is central to the Lola la trailera border series featuring the
popular actress Rosa Gloria Chagoyán (see Benamou 2009).
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discontent freely and fully was emerging and would find partial relief in
the dominant discursive mode of the 1970s.
SNAPSHOTS OF THE AUTHORITARIAN STATE; OR, HOW TO REPRESENT POLITICAL

REPRESSION WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES
At first sight, it seems paradoxical that the same political elite that al-
lowed the buildup of military force leading to the Tlatelolco massacre in
1968 and the Jueves de Corpus paramilitary violence of 1971 in the next
presidential period became the foremost promoter of cinematographic
free expression. Paradox or not, the films of this decade were tooled with
a different stance toward authority and threw a veritable critical eye on
some of the grimmest aspects of state institutions. Moreover, most texts
studying the history of Mexican national cinema coincide in recogniz-
ing the period 1970–1976 as a second golden age with an exceptional set
of circumstances allowing for the emergence of a new Mexican cinema
(Maciel 1999; Menne 2007; Mora 1982, 120–121; Noble 2005, 111; Ramírez
Berg 1992, 46–50).
From a comparative point of view, the Mexican cinema of the 1970s was
more in tune with international currents than criticism on the period has
recognized so far. Echoes of a cold look at a stagnant middle class from
the French nouvelle vague can be seen in some Mexican comedies and ur-
ban dramas.14 The ripple effect of the new Latin American cinema with
its denunciatory and anti-imperialist language reached some of these
films, too.15
The decade starts with a renovated impulse to film production due to
three main factors: (1) the renewed and intensified participation of the
state in the film sector, (2) the influence of formal film education, and
(3) the emergence of an experimental and ambitious generation of young
directors (García Riera 1998, 259, 278–279; Mora 1982, 114; Ramírez Berg
1992, 46). Many were the interesting new voices emerging in this period,
but the most influential directors who started or consolidated their career
14. Aside from the different levels of success and experimental quality of both national
cinemas, I think the despondency with which Weekend (1967) and 2 où 3 choses que je sais
d’elle (1967), by Jean-Luc Godard, and François Truffaut’s early installments of the Antoine
Doinel series depicted the French middle class had an equivalent in the ironic treatment of
the Mexican lower and middle classes in films by Luis Alcoriza (Mecánica nacional, 1972),
Jaime Humberto Hermosillo (La pasión según Berenice, 1976), and Jorge Fons (Los albañiles,
1976).
15. In my opinion, few Mexican directors displayed the same ideological pugnacity of
Armando Solanas, Octavio Getino, and Fernando Birri in Argentina or of Leon Hirszman
and Glauber Rocha in Brazil, but the strong criticism of capitalist underdevelopment and
some visual elements of the new Latin American cinema are present in films like Casca-
bel (1976), by Raúl Araiza, and Oficio de tinieblas (1978), by Archibaldo Burns, among many
others.
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at this time included Raúl Araiza, Alfonso Arau, Jorge Fons, Felipe Ca-
zals, Jaime Humberto Hermosillo, Paul Leduc, Arturo Ripstein, and Mar-
cela Fernández Violante.
If the nationalization of the Banco Cinematográfico in 1947 ensured
certain privileges in the overseeing and control of the production of film
to the Mexican government, nothing would indicate that the creation of
a whole array of industrial structures under the government of Luis Ech-
everría (1970–1976) had a different objective. However, this time under
the direction of Rodolfo Echeverría—actor, producer, and brother of the
president—the Banco Cinematográfico offered extensive financial sup-
port and broader creative freedom to most parties involved in the produc-
tion of cinematic spectacles. The state not only was instrumental in the
organization of the film school Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica
(1975) but also founded three film production companies: Conacine for
high-production-value projects and Conacite I and II for more commercial
and popular spectacles. All three production companies shared control of
the industry with the directors’ guilds and the film workers’ unions. Fur-
thermore, in response to the block-booking practices of exhibitors—who
often neglected or outright refused to screen Mexican films—the govern-
ment increased its participation in the distribution and exhibition side of
the business to the point of eventually becoming the actual owner of a
large chain of exhibition venues (Mora 1982, 114–115; Ramírez Berg 1992,
44; Rossbach and Canel 1988).16
A common denominator to some of the most salient cinematic spec-
tacles of the decade is the frequent representation of what Michel Foucault
(1984) called heterotopias of deviation. These spaces may or may not be
physically isolated from social contact, but they become the formal reposi-
tories of the antisocial, criminal, or mentally disturbed elements of soci-
ety. The obvious models are, of course, prisons and mental institutions.
Accordingly, Cazals’s El apando (1976) and Ripstein’s Cadena perpetua (1979)
are paradigmatic examples of visual investigations on an heterotopia of
deviation, both of which cast a realist glimpse at the dismal conditions in
the infamous Mexican penitentiary system (Quezada 2005, 100, 112, 125).
But many other films take on other social institutions and show them as
metaphors or actual spaces of deviancy. Family, school, and church are
represented as isolating sites of psychological torture and physical vio-
lence. Cazals’s Canoa (1975) and Araiza’s Cascabel (1976) presented remote
16. The López Portillo presidency, from 1976 to 1982, almost completely undid the ambi-
tious film policy of the 1970–1976 regime. Yet some elements of the state-owned production
infrastructure survived for a while. Because of this tenuous continuity, the group of young
and seasoned directors favored under the previous period was able to release ongoing proj-
ects and, in some cases, continue their careers with new projects, albeit with less and less
official support.
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communities as loci of murderous fanaticism or exploitation. A produc-

tion attacking the supposed Catholic piety and solidarity of the provincial
family revealed as a hypocritical structure of sexual repression and greed
was Hermosillo’s La pasión según Berenice (1976). Acquiring the form of a
dark domestic fable, Ripstein’s Castillo de la pureza (1973) offered a perturb-
ing rendition of the true possibilities of abusive patriarchal authority and
domestic violence.
Among the films with the most enduring impact from this era is Ca-
zals’s El apando (1976), based on a short story by the prominent novelist,
screenwriter, and notorious activist José Revueltas.17 The film accurately
portrays the squalor in which a trio of petty criminals survives while do-
ing time in the isolation units of a Mexico City prison. These cells were
popularly called el apando and the prisoners retained inside, the apandados.
Certainly, this was not the first or the last film to depict these infamous
institutions. What makes Cazals’s approach interesting is the detailed and
no-less-brutal portrayal of the sexual, medical, institutional, and physi-
cal abuses practiced on the bodies of all parties involved. Violence from
prisoner to prisoner, from lovers to partners, from sons to mothers, from
guards to inmates and back is on the rise in a gory escalation of aggressive
behavior. The last sequence presents the unsuccessful plot by the prison-
ers Albino (Salvador Sánchez) and Polonio (Manuel Ojeda) to make their
two girlfriends and the mother of their suicidal “friend” and addict El
Carajo (José Carlos Ruiz) smuggle drugs inside the prison. The action un-
folds like this: At the insistence of the women who are inciting the crowd
of visitors to shout for the release of the apandados, the guards conduct
three prisoners and three female visitors to the vestibule adjacent to the
visiting area. There, Albino and Polonio, apparently unprovoked, unleash
their deep-seated hatred of authority and end up beating to a pulp several
guards and the prison warden. The sequence’s tension grows when the re-
maining prison personnel hastily, but clumsily, try to contain the brawl by
introducing iron bars across the cell until the wounded guards lie uncon-
scious on the floor while the prisoners are strung up in midair, drenched
in blood, and almost impaled by the dozens of bars immobilizing their
every limb as pinned insects. The film ends with a freeze-frame medium
shot on one of the prisoners, stiffened and bleeding but still grunting in
rage (figure 3).
The brutality of the last scene serves well the film’s critical perspective
toward authority but introduces certain ambiguities toward its supposed
denunciatory purpose. On the one hand, spectators could read the ram-
pant violence and generalized corruption of the prison as a metaphor for
the actual repressive state formation in which they live. After the bloody
events of 1968 and 1971, large sectors of the labor and student movement
17. Revueltas participated as screenwriter or adapter in twenty-four film productions.
P5331.indb 130 10/15/10 1:53:45 PM

Figure 3 Inmate Polonio (Manuel Ojeda) brutally subdued in El apando (Felipe Cazals,
1976).
felt the repressive forces, local and federal, had chosen them as targets
with the intention of isolating and containing them. For the most part,
the mass media, especially radio and television, were willing to mask or
outright ignore the aggressive response of the state to all forms of social
protest (Fernández 2005; Glockner 2007, 291). Thus, in Cazals’s film, the ac-
tual scenes in which six members of the lower classes—represented rather
as lumpen proletariat—were able to “avenge” the humiliations and long-
accumulated offenses might have some cathartic effect among certain ur-
ban audiences that witnessed or endured the increased levels of social
violence. On the other hand, as it was often the case in the films of this
era, there was a redirection of the denunciatory tone toward an ideologi-
cal recuperation favoring the perspective of the authority and ultimately
legitimating the actions of the state.
In the first sequences, Albino and Polonio attract a tense sympathy from
the spectator, given the harsh environment in which they try to survive.
Midway in the film there is also a comic-erotic relief when the camera
follows the compadres in a long reverie, imagining and lusting over their
women in nude scenes. But all these identificatory lures for the audience
ultimately crumble when they intensify the abuse toward their weakened
P5331.indb 131 10/15/10 1:53:45 PM

cellmate El Carajo. The spectator learns that the “friends” are incapable
of compassion; they are in fact construed as bootstraps of institutional
violence passing the aggression from the institution to their cellmate and
everybody around. The tension grows because spectators are agonizing at
the possibility of seeing the dominant characters finally crush El Carajo,
whom his comrades would have beaten to death earlier in the film were it
not for his usefulness in their crude plan to become drug smugglers inside
the prison.
If the clear dominance of melodramas in previous eras made Mexican
spectators hope for a clean moral teleology with punishment for all the
violent and evil doers, and rewards of freedom and love for the suffering,
then Cazals’s film is clearly not providing the elements for such a com-
pensatory scheme.18 As it seems, the guards and warden receive a taste of
their own medicine, but the brutality and gory display of blood in the final
sequence renders the romanticization of the avengers impossible. Polonio
and Albino are not popular urban heroes like those depicted in prison
scenes in Gavaldón’s and Rodríguez’s films of the mystifying-indigenista
mode, nor are they social activists suffering injustice and persecution;
they are urban miscreants ready to strike if left unchecked.
The ideological recuperation of these images by the state apparatus is
not easy to follow but comes cleanly across when observed in context. As
the demagogic slogan of the second regime of the 1970s expressed “la cor-
rupción somos todos” (we all take part in corruption), the overall effect of
the films of this era is an attempt to create a level playing field in the politi-
cal arena.19 True, the apparently daring narratives point out the problems
of the regime and their images critically represent police brutality, but in
the end, if students, activists, or inmates “provoke” the violence, then no-
body is innocent. Following this normative logic, the state has the moral
obligation to preserve governability and restore order. Thus, it is not sur-
prising that after the townspeople and the fanatical priest have killed some
of the students in Cazals’s Canoa, it is none other than the army that saves
the day. It is suspiciously ironic—if not cynical—that the victims are saved
in the nick of time by the same repressive institution that massacred their
peers eight years earlier in Tlatelolco (Mraz 1984; see also Hegarty 2007).
Whatever ideological maneuvers spectators and critics could, in hind-
sight, read in the body of officially supported films of the 1970s, one can-
not lose sight of the tremendous gains in terms of social relevance attained
18. Despite the great success of other genres during the golden age, after its decline, it
was clearly melodrama that captured the broadest public and continued to grow in the
preference of spectators (De la Peza 1998). For a historical and comparative analysis of the
evolution of this genre in international cinema, see Landy (1991).
19. The slogan was part of a public campaign against corruption. The idea behind the
phrase was that the government and citizens had to recognize that corrupt behavior was
present in private and public life and that its eradication required a common effort.
P5331.indb 132 10/15/10 1:53:46 PM

by cinematic productions during this era. A sharp and realistic turn in

cinematic representation is perhaps the most important contribution of
the denunciatory-realist discourse. Missing was a perspective for the fu-
ture, a ray of hope or a call for the transformation of the relations between
state and society, between individual and government. A cry for justice is
not the same as a call for democratic action.
From a public policy perspective, a degree of state self-criticism on the
screen made sense for a regime striving to recover certain levels of le-
gitimacy after the preceding political turbulence. The cosmetic changes
implemented during this decade, including the legalization of political
parties from the left and the possibility of obtaining some funding and
minimal representation at the National Congress, attest to the urgency
with which the central power wanted to diffuse the possibility of vio-
lent uprising (Alonso and Rodríguez Lapuente 1990; Meyer 2002). Under
these circumstances, an active sponsorship of media production from
film to television was indispensable, and the effort paid off handsomely
(cf. Orozco 2002, 217). The PRI governments were able to extend the re-
gime for thirty more years despite a covert and always-publicly-denied
dirty war. The violence and durable effects of those events were almost
completely erased from public discussion until the following century
(Glockner 2007, 11–15).
The partial political opening promoted at this point allowed for some
degree of representation of party politics, and the corrupt ways of the
one-party system were by then less controversial to portray in cinematic
spectacles. For instance, a characteristic combination of the residual pi-
caresque and the new denunciatory discourse was applied in comedies
like Alfonso Arau’s Calzonzin inspector (1974), Alejandro Galindo’s Ante el
cadáver de un líder (1974), and Julián Pastor’s El héroe desconocido (1981). A
handful of dramas ventured in the inspection of mythologies and tradi-
tions of political succession: Rafael Baledón’s Renuncia por motivos de salud
(1976) and Alejandro Pelayo’s La víspera (1982). If film directors seemed in-
creasingly more comfortable portraying the flaws in the political system,
it was because they chose to use allegorical representations or, as in the
past, indirect references to specific powers of the state.
GENERIC APORIA AND DARK HUMOR, A DEMYSTIFYING DISCOURSE FOR

A NEOLIBERAL ERA
The comedic or dramatic recourse to a diluted ideological debate about

the decline and slow disintegration of the PRI governments on screen fi-
nally acquires some substance in the following decade through the last
mode of cinematic representation I propose in my analysis. The last three
PRI regimes gradually dismantled the effective intervention of the state
in the media and communications sector. The presidential period from
P5331.indb 133 10/15/10 1:53:46 PM

1982 to 1988 was the first one to foster the implementation of neoliberal
economic and political practices (Ávila 2006, 53–86). An acute disinvest-
ment in cultural projects dominated this phase, a situation that eventually
led to the outright privatization of culture (Lomnitz 2008). The production
and exhibition of Mexican film was no exception, and industry output
fell dramatically (Alvaray 2008). Transnational distributors and their as-
sociated exhibitors saturated the market, and Mexican cinema practically
disappeared from the screens.
By the mid-1990s, when the sector regained some stability and the state
again made marginal contributions to film production funds through the
Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografía (IMCINE) and the Fondo de Inver-
sión y Estímulos al Cine (Fidecine),20 given the diminished governmental
involvement it was likely that Mexican producers and directors expected
a less stringent censorship. As a positive sign, controversial films like Rojo
amanecer (1988) by Jorge Fons and El bulto (1992) by Gabriel Retes, both of
which openly discuss the Tlatelolco and Jueves de Corpus incidents, had
to wait for a cool down process of censorship but were in the end released
for the customary short run on a limited number of screens in Mexico
City (see Aviña 2004, 42; Velazco 2005). These fiction films and other docu-
mentaries on the subject made strides in the critical representation of the
state by showing for the first time direct army and police involvement
in the repression of students and other activists of the previous era (De
la Mora 2006; Velazco 2005). However, Fons’s and Retes’s works did not
diverge significantly enough from the denunciatory mode of the 1970s,
because they do not show the inner workings of the one-party system and
its wide net of complicities, a challenge the emerging demystifying-realist
discourse would take head on.
Perhaps the film best exemplifying the new mode of representation
was Luis Estrada’s La ley de Herodes (1999). The greatest irony of this film
is that while the last PRI regime of the twentieth century, Ernesto Ze-
dillo’s government (1994–2000), publicly touted its renewed commitment
to freedom of expression, the film authorities at IMCINE—still unsure
about the room to maneuver cinematographic representation really had—
unsuccessfully tried to delay its release (Velazco 2005). After all, this was
the first film in years to offer direct political commentary, referring to his-
torical figures and parties by name.
Most critics see in this film a daring effort to reveal the mechanisms of
the Mexican political system:
20. The first neoliberal government created IMCINE and Fidecine after the privatization
of the state film conglomerate in 1983. Although funding of the organizations has been
erratic and meager, their support to the film sector helped the slow and gradual reconstruc-
tion of the industry to its present condition.
P5331.indb 134 10/15/10 1:53:46 PM

In this farcical portrayal of the PRI nation, nobody escapes unscathed. The Con-
stitution ruling the country, emerging from the revolutionary struggle of 1910,
becomes an instrument of control: it is the repository of norms that the powerful
never follow but effectively use to exert impunity. From the municipal power,
the parish, and the brothel, citizens are dispossessed and their resources feed
fortunes. (Velazco 2005, 75)21
Certainly, Estrada’s film represents a remarkable turning point in Mex-
ican cinematography: it was the first time in seventy years that the two
main parties, PRI and Partido Acción Nacional (PAN), are directly ad-
dressed and criticized. However, there was still a dodging act of indirect
cinematic representation. Because the events portrayed in the film cor-
respond to another historical era, the lens of 1999 again renounces a di-
rect confrontation of its historical moment by building an allegoric plane
anchored in the era of President Alemán (1946–1952) (cf. Aviña 2004, 45).
That is to say, Río Escondido and La ley de Herodes share the same historical
referent, although neither assumes full responsibility for directly criticiz-
ing its corresponding political conjuncture (cf. Rangel 2006).
La ley de Herodes narrates the toils and tribulations of Juan Vargas, a
happy-go-lucky petty officer of the PRI. The initial sequences seem to
put him in a similar situation to that of the picaresque figure of previ-
ous decades. With a fundamental difference, now the pícaro embodies
the power of the state. Thus, instead of innuendos and double entendres
with a comic resolution peppering the narrative, as in the folklorizing-
picaresque discourse, it is dark humor, parody, and the grotesque that
make this film a catalog of the sins and crimes of the official party. Also
very important, and an element that distinguishes these images from pre-
vious representations, is a darkening of the comic situations and a charac-
teristic use of film noir lighting and editing. The combination of these ele-
ments ends up placing the spectators in a generic aporia. For a good part
of the film, spectators cannot decide whether they are watching a comedy
or a drama until the violence and the excesses of the character have taken
over his caricaturesque representation.
Vargas starts the film as a figure worthy of commiseration and a source
of spectatorial identification for his simplicity and eagerness to serve. But
little by little, the main character becomes an aberration. The turning
point seems to be the sequence in which the petty officer, enticed by a
party leader, arbitrarily applies the state and federal law in preposterous
schemes of racketeering and extortion. A curious exchange of gifts char-
acterizes the sequence presenting this transformation. Vargas pays a visit
to the capital city and brings a piglet as a present for the party leader, who
ends up reciprocating with a gun and a copy of the constitution, plus the
express instruction to use both “at his convenience” (figure 4). Once the
21. My translation.
P5331.indb 135 10/15/10 1:53:46 PM

Figure 4 Vargas (Damián Alcázar) receives from his boss (Pedro Armendariz Jr.) a copy
of the Constitution to use “at his convenience” in La ley de Herodes (Luis Estrada,
1999).
small-town municipal president is authorized by the party leadership to

be corrupt, he quickly passes from victim to victimizer. This turn in the
dramatic construction of Vargas heightens the ambiguity of his character
and leaves the spectator to dwell in an emotional and generic confusion.
If the emotional teleology of melodrama in a soap opera trains specta-
tors to laugh and cry alternatively, with situations clearly delimited by
extradiegetic sound, these certainties are nowhere to be found in the film.
In La ley de Herodes, spectators listen to a casual musical score with tropi-
calized and mellow tunes while facing the grotesque images of the politi-
cal and human degradation of Juan Vargas. So, they end up not knowing
whether to cry or laugh. According to Bakhtin (1984), one of the main func-
tions of the grotesque is to degrade what is considered high and powerful
to restore the sense of equilibrium while confronting the terror of natural
forces. But the effort demanded from the spectator here is considerable;
the drama goes from rags to riches, but the apparent improvement has the
caveat of a spiraling moral degradation. The assassinations Vargas per-
petrated, his disgrace as a cuckold husband, and the prostitution of his
good intentions leave the spectator without the possibility of catharsis; the
spectator never reaches a new equilibrium.
P5331.indb 136 10/15/10 1:53:46 PM

The represented state in this film acquires the dimensions of a perverse

black box, absorbing misery and ejecting not poor and marginal beings
sublimated in images with tragic undertones—like in the mystifying-
indigenista discourse—but producing gleeful cynical monsters. The re-
current presence of farm pigs in the frame functions as a visual Greek
chorus announcing what will become of those who dare to enter the infa-
mous path of political power (Velazco 2005). The photographic style of film
noir, with its lateral and low key lighting producing pronounced shadows,
generates a criminalized image of the political system never before pre-
sented with such precision. Vargas, ably played by Damián Alcázar, first
becomes an apprentice and then embodies the very system of destitution
and corrupt practices the spectators easily recognize. This pessimistic
view is what confers validity to the film. Such a direct commentary on the
contorted practices of power was unthinkable ten years before, when Rojo
amanecer or El bulto had appeared.
In terms of the representation of the state, this film becomes a catalog
of the different modes discussed here and then furthers its reach with a
parodic demystifying effect. To be sure, the historical setting of the action
in the late 1940s and the initial comic construction of the main character
are clear references to the periods of mystification and picaresque repre-
sentation. The denunciatory realism and sexualized comedy of the 1970s
and 1980s are hinted at in the political and personal degradation of Var-
gas. Finally, the generic aporia allows for the clear dominance of the dark
humor and sarcastic views of the demystifying discourse of the 1990s and
early 2000s.
At the turn of the millennium, some other productions featured the
demystifying realist discourse, but it was far from becoming a dominant
mode. True, under the current resurgence of Mexican film, hailed by some
as a second new wave, the screens are definitely presenting an ironic and
disaffected view of Mexican society (Amaya and Senio 2007; Menne 2007).
But even if Amores perros (2000) and Y tu mamá también (2001) give few
glimpses into the renegotiated relationships between citizens and social
institutions, they do not substantively touch political realities. These films
are—one way or another—repeating and mixing certain elements of the
picaresque and denunciatory discourses without fully adopting the new
demystifying dynamics.
Almost at the end of the first decade of the Mexican political transition,
we are still waiting for fiction films to expose in greater depth the cor-
rupt ways and massive economic and political crimes of the old and new
political class. Certainly, other films have tried to reproduce and expand
the daring discourse inaugurated by La ley de Herodes: dramas of trans-
national conspiracy like Conejo en la luna (Jorge Ramírez Suárez, 2004),
dark humor parodies like Todo el poder (Fernando Sariñana, 2000), Pachito
Rex (Fabián Hoffman, 2001), and the sequel to Luis Estrada’s first film Un
P5331.indb 137 10/15/10 1:53:47 PM

mundo maravilloso (2006), but none has gone beyond the surprising and
brilliantly sarcastic moment of demystification and refreshing defiance of-
fered by La ley de Herodes.
Nonetheless, as do other critics and observers of the new spectacles, I
still hope cinematic discourse in fiction film will continue its development,
expanding previous or devising new visual modes to address the state,
and that during the present reemergence of Mexican cinema, directors
and producers will finally gather the strength to directly confront recent
history, and claim the freedom, to criticize political reality face to face.
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PRECURSORS TO FEMICIDE
Guatemalan Women in a Vortex of Violence
David Carey Jr.

University of Southern Maine
M. Gabriela Torres
Wheaton College
Abstract: Today women in Guatemala are killed at nearly the same rate as they were
in the early 1980s when the civil war became genocidal. Yet the current femicide
epidemic is less an aberration than a reflection of the way violence against women
has become normalized in Guatemala. Used to re-inscribe patriarchy and sustain
both dictatorships and democracies, gender-based violence morphed into femicide
when peacetime governments became too weak to control extralegal and paramili-
tary powers. The naturalization of gender-based violence over the course of the
twentieth century maintained and promoted the systemic impunity that undergirds
femicide today. By accounting for the gendered and historical dimensions of the
cultural practices of violence and impunity, we offer a re-conceptualization of the
social relations that perpetuate femicide as an expression of post-war violence.
INTRODUCTION
Since 2000, more than five thousand women and girls have been bru-
tally murdered in Guatemala (Prensa Libre June 4, 2010). Their bodies lit-
ter city streets, urban ravines, and the imagination of the media. Images
of murdered women and girls are so commonplace that each new death
risks becoming a footnote to illustrate a rising death toll. These femicides
take place in a country that has become infamous for having one of the
region’s top homicide rates (Godoy 2006; Handy 2004; Sanford 2008). In
2007, for example, Guatemalans were killed at a rate of 41.8 people per
100,000, compared to U.S. figures of 5.6 people per 100,000 in the same
year (Ibarra 2008; U.S. Department of Justice 2007). Even though men are
The authors wish to thank Patricia Harms for organizing the panel at the 2007 Latin Ameri-
can Studies Association International Conference where we first presented the research
that culminated in this collaboration. Comments from the audience at that session encour-
aged us to broaden our scope. Previous drafts of this article benefited from the constructive
criticism of Cecilia Menjivar and the three anonymous LARR reviewers. The authors also
thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, which funded part
of the research on which this article is based.
P5331.indb 142 10/15/10 1:53:47 PM

PRECURSORS TO FEMICIDE 143
ten times more likely to be killed than women in Guatemala, the number
of femicides has been growing—from 213 in 2000 and 383 in 2003 to 665
in 2005 and 722 in 2008. The astonishing number of unsolved murders of
both men and women demonstrates both perpetrators’ impunity and the
state’s tolerance of gender-based violence (Costantino 2006). A historical
analysis of the processes through which gender-based violence became
normalized is crucial to understanding femicide today. As with violence
against women during the late 1970s and 1980s, the femicide epidemic
(and the more generalized violence in Guatemalan society) is partly a
function of a historical gendered violence that the state and society con-
doned as early as the 1900s.
Femicide, a term brought into currency by feminist sociologist Diana
Russell in the late 1970s, was reconceptualized by Russell in the late 1980s
to denote the gendered terror practices that culminate in socially toler-
ated murder (Caputi and Russell 1992). According to Russell (2001b, 3),
femicide, which she defines as “the killing of females by males because
they are female,” exists only because it is sustained by culturally accepted
practices that promote gendered violence, including the socially tolerated
forms of sexual abuse, physical and emotional battery, and sexual harass-
ment. As Russell (2001a, 177) argues, femicide bolsters male dominance
and renders “all women chronically and profoundly unsafe.” Guatemala’s
historical record reveals a long history of acceptance of gendered violence
and the military government’s and the judiciary’s role in normalizing
misogyny. As a political term, femicide holds the state responsible for
violence against women because it fails to ensure their safety and toler-
ates perpetrators’ violent acts (Sanford 2007). As Marcela Lagarde y de los
Ríos (2006, 1) asserts in her study of femicide in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico,
“Feminicide occurs when the authorities fail to efficiently carry out their
duties to prevent and punish [the killing of women] and thus create an
environment of impunity.”1 We argue that femicide in Guatemala has
its roots in authorities’ failure to prevent and punish all violence against
women (not just homicide) as early as the turn of the century. Our goal is
1. Latin American feminists, led by Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos (2006), suggest that
femicidio in Spanish simply denotes female homicide and that feminicidio is more suggestive
of Russell’s concept. But the feminicidio that Lagarde de los Ríos suggests is not quite equiva-
lent to Russell’s concept of femicide; the former promotes the notion that it is possible to
understand women’s murders as a type of genocide because they work to destroy women
as a social group in society. Although feminicidio shares Russell’s claim that cultural and
social practices sustain the murder of women, Russell does not conceptualize this type of
gender terror to be fully equivalent in its effects to genocide (Russell and Van de Ven 1976).
Because our goal is to understand the historical processes by which the state and society
helped create the conditions for the broader phenomenon of violence against women, we
use the term femicidio or femicide to denote the killing of women instead of the term femini-
cidio or feminicide, which assumes that these processes are in place.
P5331.indb 143 10/15/10 1:53:48 PM

to understand the process by which violence against women became state

sanctioned, socially accepted, and quotidian.
Because it represents a web of gendered social practices and relations
of violence, femicide must be understood beyond individual violent acts
(Radford and Russell 1992). Looking at historical social relations of vio-
lence sheds light on why women are killed in Guatemala and, more im-
portant, how killing with impunity became possible and acceptable. With
its roots in the gendered legal and social practices of the past century, sys-
temic impunity was cemented during the country’s thirty-six-year civil
war (when terror forced the social acceptance of mass murder) and be-
came further entrenched thereafter through a postwar peace process that
has left violence unresolved.
VIOLENCE AS A SOCIAL RELATIONSHIP
The pervasiveness of femicide is one of the most often-cited changes in

the character of Guatemala’s violence in the transition from the thirty-six-
year civil war (1960–1996)—also known as La Violencia (the violence)—to
the postwar period. As the sociologist Angelina Snodgrass Godoy (2006)
argues, violence in Guatemala has changed not so much in terms of the
quantity of victims but mainly in the way social supports are mobilized
to sustain high levels of violent crime. We argue that gender-based vio-
lence has played a crucial role in the long-term acceptance of high lev-
els of violence. Violence against women in Guatemala has become a
constitutive—rather than aberrant—feature of the social fabric because
sexism and the civic exclusion, public denigration, and physical abuse of
women have been socially and legally excused (Menjivar 2008). To cite
but one recent example, in 2000, the Guatemalan Office for the Defense of
Women received 4,908 allegations of domestic violence against women—a
figure that probably represented only 5 percent of cases (Morales 2001).
Throughout Latin America, an increase in violence since the 1980s has
been associated with the effects of globalization, economic crisis, reces-
sion, and neoliberal policies aimed to reduce the size of the state. In Guate-
mala, another factor loomed even larger than those. Because La Violencia
normalized violence and rape, several experts have argued that it was the
genesis of both femicide and the state’s complicity in it (McKinley 2007;
Tuckman 2007). To be sure, because the military, patrullas de autodefensa
civil (civil self-defense patrols), and other security forces personnel who
committed 99 percent of sexual crimes against women during the civil war
have never been brought to trial, the impunity with which this violence
was perpetrated facilitates today’s brutal murders of women (Comisión
para el Esclaramiento Histórica 1999; Consorcio Actoras de Cambio 2006).
Yet identifying La Violencia as the sole or even primary catalyst ignores
a greater historical trend of widespread violence against women and
P5331.indb 144 10/15/10 1:53:48 PM

disregard for their civil rights that dates back at least to the dictatorships
of the early twentieth century. When, for example, the “Macheteador de
Mujeres” struck in 1931, the police described his nineteen-year-old vic-
tim as “a woman of indigenous race, with various grave injuries on the
right side of her face and neck, similar to the way the forearms and hands
were horribly knifed. It was clear that all of the injuries had been caused
by a machete” (La Gaceta: Revista de Policía y Variedades [hereafter La Ga-
ceta] May 24, 1931). In another chilling historical precedent, more than one
hundred years before a seven-year-old girl was kidnapped, raped, and
beheaded on her way to a local store in 2007 (Guatemala Human Rights
Commission 2007), two men in Chimaltenango grabbed a six-year-old girl,
pulled her up on a horse, and rode off with her as she screamed.2 These
historically distant but contextually close incidents are but a few examples
that speak to the persistence and increasing acceptance of violence against
women and the ability to violate others without repercussion.
PRECURSORS TO FEMICIDE, 1898–1944

During the first half of the twentieth century, two of Latin America’s
most repressive dictators ruled Guatemala: Manuel Estrada Cabrera
(1898–1920) and General Jorge Ubico (1931–1944). Although aggression
against women did not begin with these authoritarian regimes, the vio-
lence that buttressed them filtered down to community and family rela-
tions. The pervasiveness of domestic violence and the systematic impu-
nity that accompanied it contextualizes the state’s violation of its female
citizens’ rights. If evidence from Chimaltenango’s criminal court records
(1900–1925) and jefe político (governor) papers (1920–1935), Patzicía’s mu-
nicipal archives, and La Gaceta are any indication, women were routinely
the victims of beatings and whippings, and to a lesser extent rape and
murder.3 Even when judges ruled in their favor, the courts offered little
protection or redress.
Defendants’ testimonies indicate that men assumed ownership over
women’s bodies. Similar to the way the Estrada Cabrera and Ubico dic-
tatorships threatened Guatemalans by occasionally murdering political
enemies, “official indifference toward widespread sexual aggression” re-
inforced what the historian Cindy Forster (1999, 72) calls “gendered ter-
ror,” which both provided an outlet for male frustrations that did not
challenge the state and perpetuated a sense of fear and intimidation
that regimes used to keep people in line. When applied to Guatemala,
2. Archivo General de Centro América (AGCA), índice 116, Chimaltenango 1902, legajo
(leg.) 3, expediente (ex.) 23.
3. AGCA índice 116, Chimaltenango; AGCA Jefatura Política de Chimaltenango; Archivo
Municipal de Patzicía [AMP]; La Gaceta.
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the anthropologist Deborah Poole’s (1994, 8) argument that “states have

used terror and violence to construct both regimes of overt authoritarian
domination and systems of democratic rule” suggests that gender-based
violence helped sustain the Estrada Cabrera and Ubico dictatorships and
the more democratic governments that ruled from 1920 to 1931.
The same obedience that authoritarian (and even democratic) regimes
demanded from their citizens was reflected in gender relations. Some
male defendants, such as Juan Sian, explained that they hit their wives
because they “did not want to obey what I commanded.”4 According to the
criminal record, both Mayan and Ladino (nonindigenous Guatemalan)
men beat their female partners for speaking their minds. The thirty-two
year-old Ladino farmer Eduardo Gramajo hit his domestic partner Paula
Galvez “for a bad response that she gave.”5 Such disregard for women’s
self-determination justified violence against women who did not conform
to men’s wishes.
What emerges in the judicial record is a parallel system of justice that
governed gender relations in highland communities. Customary law in
many Mayan communities recognized a man’s right to hit his wife (and
children). When couples married, elders informed new husbands that
they must control their wives, which they could achieve with restrained
levels of physical force. In turn, women learned that they must always
obey their husbands and endure occasional beatings (Bunzel 1967; Carey
2006; Handy 2004; Kalny 2003). Such counsel was part of the social process
that sustained violence. It also reified highland men’s gendered powers,
particularly because court officials did little to curb it. While highland
customary law condoned violence, judges’ responses to domestic violence
cases expanded the parameters of gender-based violence by approaching
women as “outlets for male aggression” (Socolow 1980, 57). To be sure,
judges’ rulings reflected a broader acceptance that dated back to the co-
lonial era of using sexual and gender-based violence to uphold patriar-
chy (Few 2002; Socolow 1980). That neither customary nor state law ef-
fectively discouraged domestic violence points to the ways communities
and authorities alike socially supported and perpetuated violence against
women.
The collusion of such state institutions as the courts and police with
local cultural practices sustained violence in highly gendered ways. In
contrast to men, when women lashed out, authorities depicted them as
immoral, savage “cave-dwellers” who “drank the blood” of their antago-
nists or simpletons who could not be held responsible for their actions—
discourse that perversely justified their subjugation by presenting women
as less than human (La Gaceta June 21, 1931; La Revista de la Guardia Civil
4. AMP, paquete (paq.). 24, 1 de febrero 1928.

5. AMP, paq. 127, Libro de Sentencias Económicas (LSE) 1935, 28 de enero 1936.
P5331.indb 146 10/15/10 1:53:48 PM

August 15, 1946). Patriarchal perceptions privileged male violence over

female violence. As the gendered discourse of violence against women
became increasingly normalized, legal practices did little to mitigate it.
Guatemala’s current femicide epidemic is, at least in part, an outgrowth
of this past.
VULNERABLE AND VIOLATED WOMEN IN THE FIRST

HALF OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Although by their nature archival documents and particularly court

records and newspaper accounts capture extraordinary events and
thereby distort our lens onto the past, the frequency with which women
were forced to defend themselves against unruly drunks, randy men, and
violent husbands points to a larger pattern of gender-based violence, espe-
cially when considering that, for reasons of propriety, modesty, or honor,
some women never reported such crimes. When women did come for-
ward to report domestic abuse, often both the plaintiff and the defendant
identified alcohol as a factor in the crime; the latter generally did so to ex-
plain, if not excuse, his actions (Bunzel 1967). For example, the forty-year-
old day laborer Luis González, from Tecpán, said he was “too drunk” to
remember attempting to strangle his wife in August 1947—an act that
left her face and head cut and bruised. In the case’s chilling conclusion,
González commuted his sentence and left the courtroom with her.6
The record of female fatalities (see, e.g., La Gaceta April 19, 1942; La Ga-
ceta, July 4, 1943) is a testament to the seriousness of death threats that men
used to marginalize and gain power over women. When, for example, Se-
ñora Victoria Santos de Escobar caught her husband Sotero Escobar drunk
with another woman, “he took [Victoria] by the arm and wanted to bring
her down a dark alley; he tried to hit her indicating that he would kill her.”
Fortunately for Victoria, two men came to her aid. In taking her testimony,
the scribe noted, “She assumed that in reality he was going to kill her
because she knows him well and that he is capable of it.” Partly because
he did not cause “any injury or even insult her,” the thirty-five-year-old
farmer was absolved.7 It must have given the judge pause, however, when
three weeks later on August 15, 1946, he found Sotero guilty of whipping
his fourteen-year-old son.8
On the basis of the criminal record, the transition from the Ubico dic-
tatorship to the democratic government of Juan José Arévalo Bermejo
(1945–1951) did not soften violent patriarchs. Despite the Arévalo and
Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán (1951–1954) administrations’ rhetoric of social
6. AMP, paq. 107, LSE 1945–1947, 8 de agosto 1947.

7. AMP, paq. 107, LSE 1945–1947, 22 de junio 1946.
8. AMP, paq. 107, LSE 1945–1947, 15 de agosto 1946.
P5331.indb 147 10/15/10 1:53:49 PM

equality and justice, sexual violence “went largely unpunished under the
new political order” (Forster 1999, 72). In her study of sexual crimes in
San Marcos, Guatemala, during these democratic administrations, For-
ster (1999, 72) found that “a pervasive acceptability of hateful acts toward
women seeped into work, politics, and economic change.” As the afore-
mentioned cases indicate, our own research bears this out too.
Although gender-based violence struck both Maya and Ladino, if La
Gaceta and criminal records from Chimaltenango are any indication,
there was a class component to reporting such crimes. Though not im-
mune to domestic violence, early twentieth-century elites seldom allowed
such transgressions to be dragged into public arenas. At the same time,
by compelling poor and working-class women to work outside the home,
poverty threatened their security for the same reason it afforded them
more mobility and freedom than elite women. In turn, when men had to
migrate for work, women were vulnerable in their own homes. Such was
the case in 1910, when “poverty obligated” Felipe Colaj “to work in Guate-
mala City.” Aware that Colaj was away, Juan Mux Chali broke into Colaj’s
home around midnight on July 15 while Colaj’s pregnant wife Andrea
Cana was asleep. After he threw her to the floor, Mux Chali held Cana at
gunpoint, put a handkerchief in her mouth, and raped her in the presence
of her five-year-old son. Even though she miscarried the next day, Cana
did not report the crime (her husband later did) because Mux Chali had
threatened to kill her if she did.9 In an indication of the extent to which
domestic violence had become normalized, the only witness who heard
Andrea Cana scream did not bother to investigate her well-being—nor
did he notice whether Mux Chali was the assailant. As such, Mux Chali
denied the accusation and was freed. By not responding to Cana’s screams
or even reporting the incident, the witness effectively drew a veil over the
crime. As Forster (1999) found, when government officials and local men
and women upheld the vulnerability and subjugation of females in family
and intracommunity relations, they sustained gender-based violence.
Women who had the courage to bring their gender-based violence in-
cidents to court left behind a record that illuminates how social construc-
tions of women contributed to their vulnerability. When explaining their
plight, most plaintiffs began by emphasizing that they had done nothing
to provoke male violence. Although rapists most often denied the charges,
defendants accused of domestic violence often pointed out their victims’
failings. Among the most commonly cited justifications for hitting their
spouses was a failure to keep the house and children in order. When ex-
plaining to the court why he had beaten his wife while she was sick in
bed, the thirty-year-old day laborer Benito Ajsivinac said, “It is true that I
hit my woman yesterday, because she does not manage the care of her son,
9. AGCA, índice 116, Chimaltenango 1911, leg. 12E, ex. 43.
P5331.indb 148 10/15/10 1:53:49 PM

and much less of her house.”10 As was often the case for these women, even
when the judge ruled in their favor, the legal system offered little protec-
tion. Sentenced to ten days in prison, Ajsivinac posted bail after one night
in jail. Indicating the extent to which the state abdicated its responsibility
to ensure the safety of women, at least half of those convicted of domestic
violence could afford to pay their fines and thus avoided incarceration.
In communities where men lashed out if they felt insulted, rejected, or
jealous, or simply considered their wives gossips, women’s diminished
social status contributed to their vulnerability. Underscoring perpetra-
tors’ insolence, many defendants made no attempt to justify their actions,
as was the case when the nineteen-year-old Isabel Méndez brought her
husband to court for beating her; he simply confessed.11 Although most
gender-based violence during this period happened among kin, the vic-
tim and perpetrator were not always related, such as the time José Estrada
whipped Leocadia Esquit with his tumpline.12 As perhaps the most ob-
vious (and alarming) consequence of the normalization of gender-based
violence, many men who beat their wives, such as the forty-three-year-old
Ladino farmer Esteban Ordóñez, said they got along fine with them insist-
ing there was “no unpleasantness” between them.13
The legal system perpetuated domestic notions of women. When judges
based their rulings on those assumptions, female plaintiffs were at a dis-
advantage. Even though the fifty-year-old Mayan farmer Felipe Lacan hit
his wife Petrona Perón while drunk, the judge sentenced both parties.
Because punishing victims of domestic violence was rare, the judge must
have found Lacan’s confession compelling: “The reason [I hit my spouse]
is that she was drunk, failing her domestic obligations and she had ad-
dressed me with some insults and dirty words and I ask that you punish
at the same time my wife for these transgressions.”14 Although the judge
did not explain his reasoning, the message was clear: behavior unbecom-
ing in a woman—inebriation, domestic failings, insulting her husband—
warranted punishment. Disciplining women’s transgressions had strong
social supports (Carey 2008). Instead of trying to extirpate gender-based
violence, authorities often reinforced it. By accepting men’s justifications
for domestic violence as plausible legal and social exceptions and met-
ing out inconsequential sentences, judges effectively granted perpetrators
impunity.
Although authorities’ reluctance to intervene in domestic affairs partly
stemmed from their recognition of potestad marital, or a man’s right over
10. AMP, paq. 107, LSE 1945–1947, 9 de julio 1945.

11. AMP, paq. 24, 6 de febrero 1928.
12. AMP, paq 127, LSE 1935, 18 de octubre 1935.
13. AMP, paq. 24, 1 de agosto 1929.
14. AMP, paq. 24, LSE 1906, 8 de octubre 1916.
P5331.indb 149 10/15/10 1:53:49 PM

the person and property of his wife, the judicial structure essentially
condoned domestic violence. Never as powerful as Estrada Cabrera and
Ubico conveyed, the early twentieth-century state used gender-based vio-
lence to uphold its rule. Even though Ladino judges’ authority emanated
from the state, they still had to appease their Mayan charges to a certain
extent, because ultimately they granted judges local legitimacy. If com-
munities deemed judges’ decisions unjust or punitive, unrest or revolts
could ensue. Read this way, victims of domestic violence were the sacri-
ficial lambs who kept quotidian tensions at an acceptable level (Aguirre
and Salvatore 2001). Forster (1999, 59) extends this analysis to the national
level, arguing that by diverting “the anger of men into ‘nonpolitical’ chan-
nels . . . Ubico was served admirably by male violence against women.”
The same pattern during Estrada Cabrera’s rule reminds us that “sexual
coercion was an eminently political phenomenon” (Forster 1999, 70). For
women, judges’ refusal to deter gender-based violence was an exercise of
the state’s power.
In a legal system that elite men established and presided over, domestic
violence was not afforded the same attention and seriousness as offenses
that challenged state authority. Underscoring judges’ priorities and the
denigration of women during Estrada Cabrera’s reign, the thirty-two-
year-old day laborer José Coc was sentenced to fifteen days for “disre-
specting the authority” in court and only five days for hitting his wife!15 If
as Michel Foucault (1995) posits, punishment reveals the state’s perception
of the seriousness of crime, then the Guatemalan state considered domes-
tic violence little more than a nuisance.
For communities in which Maya constituted the overwhelming ma-
jority of the population, a surprising number of Ladinos appear in the
criminal record as victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. Although
gender relations differed in Ladino and Mayan households, domestic vio-
lence knew no ethnic boundaries. Even though the larger absolute number
of cases involving Maya is reflective of their demographics, the broader
court record also reveals that Ladinas were less likely than Mayan women
to avail themselves of the courts in the first half of the twentieth century.
As such, Ladino sexual violence was less likely to be reported than Mayan
sexual violence.
Judging from the court record of women who repeatedly returned to
the authorities to denounce their husbands for domestic violence and evi-
dence of women’s use of such extrajudicial protection as flight and self-
defense, some women lived in “a chronic state of emergency,” where vio-
lence was the rule, not the exception (Taussig 1992, 11; see also Benjamin
1969). That some men did not perceive a need to justify and that others
failed to see any “unpleasantness” in their violent relations with their
15. AMP, paq. 24, LSE 1906, 30 de julio 1916.
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female kin further speaks to the extent to which aggression became em-
bedded in everyday gender relations. Even as early as the turn of the cen-
tury, it is possible to see the process by which violence became normalized
and commonplace—mundane, if not banal—and thus ignored. Ironically,
this process of normalization can be attributed partly to a judicial system
that facilitated violence by excusing men’s transgressions against women.
These gendered practices reinforced violence as a preferred mechanism of
social governance. Femicide’s pervasiveness today rests partly on the his-
torical process of giving perpetrators the de facto power to violate others.
THE GENDERED PRIVILEGES OF VIOLENCE
Although Guatemalans came to accept a certain level of violence among

men, they deemed violent women feral or irrational. Because their behav-
ior defied social norms, accounts of female aggression were almost in-
variably accompanied by attempts to explain it. In contrast, excepting ho-
micides, judges, lawyers, police, and journalists seldom felt compelled to
explain men’s violent outbursts beyond attributing it to a drunken binge.
As in the United States and elsewhere, the Guatemalan press sensation-
alized portrayals of violent women. When the domestic servant Agueda
(or Adelaida) Noriega was captured in 1933, nine years after she murdered
the family for whom she worked, La Gaceta printed a story that ran more
than forty pages, almost as long as its normal editions (La Gaceta March 12,
1933). Even given the unusual and violent nature of the crime, the atten-
tion afforded it was excessive. When the police arrested violent women,
they portrayed them as savages. To cite one crucial example from 1931,
when bringing Magdalena Siquibache and Gregoria Boor before the court
for fighting in the street, the police exclaimed, “so furious was Magdalena,
she wanted to drink the blood of Gregoria, armed with a sharp knife” (La
Gaceta June 21, 1931). In another report titled, “For Unconfirmed Jealousy,
a Woman Becomes Bloodthirsty,” the police graphically described Juana
Francisca Carrera’s response once she became convinced that her partner
was having an affair with Julia Ávila. “Juana Francisca converted into a
troglodyte, armed herself with a stone with a sharpened edge . . . Ávila’s
blouse, as a result of her rival’s casts, became a heap of useless rags” (La
Gaceta June 21, 1931). Violent outbursts such as these notwithstanding, po-
lice reports often perpetuated depictions of women as irrational beings
dominated by passion.
In contrast to its obsession with highlighting violent women, La Gaceta
mostly ignored the more common and pervasive violence against women.
When reading the police blotter, the reader is left to infer incidents of do-
mestic violence from the copious reports of male inebriation and disor-
derly conduct; seldom is the connection explicit. That newspapers and even
La Gaceta rarely reported domestic abuse demonstrates how normalized
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such social interactions had become. In its portrayal of women as victims

and aggressors, La Gaceta both elucidated and obfuscated gender-based
violence. The account of Abraham Pelo and Gerardo Sequen attacking
la indígena Juana Vásquez with a rock and machete on February 8, 1931,
seems sanitized compared with the graphic descriptions of Magdalena
Siquibache’s and Juana Francisca Carrera’s crimes. La Gaceta ignored the
condition in which her attackers left Vásquez (La Gaceta February 8, 1931).
Although gender distinctions in regards to physical abuse already were
present in highland communities, the police and the courts expanded the
boundaries of acceptable male violence while constricting those of female
violence. Even as gender-based violence became normalized, female ag-
gressors were singled out as deviants in ways that implicitly condoned
efforts to keep women in line. As in other patriarchal societies, in Guate-
mala, violence was a male domain.
Social constructions that portrayed female violence as abhorrent aber-
rations influenced and in turn were reinforced by public policy and law.
When women attacked men, some judges meted out greater punishment
to them than to male aggressors. To cite one example, when Raymunda
Miculax beat her domestic partner Juan Martín on January 17, 1935, the
judge sentenced her to ten days in jail, commutable by ten cents a day.
What distinguished her punishment from that of her male counterparts
was the judge’s assessment of an additional one quetzal fine to cover Juan’s
medical costs, despite the empírico’s (unlicensed physician) testimony that
no medical care was necessary.16 Reinforcing the web of gendered social
practices that sustained violence, authorities and communities both sup-
ported violence against women and ostracized and punished violent
women.
The same social constructions that downplayed women’s humanity
also held the potential to exculpate them. For instance, in 1946, one jour-
nalist argued that, because women were inferior to men, they could not be
held responsible for committing crimes. Recognizing society’s oppression
of women, the writer asserted that “the woman has been unable to de-
velop her mental faculties nor form a clear and precise conscience. . . . This
is the origin of innumerable crimes that are not anything more than the
incapacity to look for solutions other than the ones that instincts dictate.”
The author argued further that female crimes were never the product of
premeditation, intelligence or deceit but rather motivated by self-defense,
revenge, or love. The journalist concluded:
[M]ost female crimes lack the basic elements of imputableness: intelligence and
freedom. . . . [and] free-will. Because for free-will to exist, requires the intelligent
capacity to elucidate between good and bad, capacity to conceive the results of an
action and all the possible consequences. Most female delinquents—and this has
16. AMP, paq 127, LSE 1935, 17 de enero 1935.
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been proven—in addition to their mental deficit, find themselves with numerous
natural afflictions. . . . These circumstances have impeded the woman from par-
ticipating in society with a sound, disposing mind. (La Revista de la Guardia Civil
August 15, 1946)
The very condition of being female explained women’s crimes. Though

expressed in a more sympathetic tone than those evoked in police reports,
this writer too judged women to be less than fully human—an impres-
sion that reflected criminal codes enacted in the late nineteenth century
throughout Latin America, which considered women “irresponsible” for
crimes because of their “naturally emotional” state (Aguirre and Salvatore
2001, 23).
WOMEN AND SENSATIONAL VIOLENCE
Throughout the twentieth century, newspapers sensationalized mur-

der. Journalists working during La Violencia in particular described the
coverage of murder as indispensable to their craft. One journalist recalled,
“We even used a slogan to describe it: ‘Our Daily Dead.’ By 10 am we
always had a photo of some political death or something of the sort” (per-
sonal communication between the author and anonymous Prensa Libre
reporter, April 2005, Guatemala City). According to editors of Prensa Libre,
during the civil war, reporting on murder, state-sanctioned or otherwise,
was something that appealed to readers. Editors suggest that circulation
figures support this claim and confirm that journalists were encouraged
to seek out such stories. Associates of the Guatemalan Armed Forces, who
provided reporters sympathetic to their cause with preferential access to
“crime scenes” and an occasional photograph of murder scenes, even oc-
casionally encouraged coverage of political murder (personal communi-
cation between the author and anonymous Prensa Libre and El Imparcial
editors and reporters, March 2005, Guatemala City). Reporters and editors
interviewed suggest that the practice of sensationalizing murder has its
roots in the business of journalism, and this is partly borne out in the
aforementioned examples from the earlier part of the century.
However, the practice of counterinsurgency policies during La Violen-
cia sensationalized violence against women in particular to reinforce the
military state’s patriarchal role. Ten years before the height of La Violen-
cia, the murder of Rogelia Cruz Martínez stands out as emblematic of how
women’s bodies became sensationalized in this period. Embodying the
characteristics of the ideal of woman in the late 1950s, Cruz Martínez was
constituted—as Anne McClintock (1993) suggests is characteristic of colo-
nial spaces—as an emblem of the nation through her body. As a Ladino
beauty queen and teacher representing Guatemala at the 1959 Miss Uni-
verse Pageant, Cruz Martínez was the epitome of femininity. After Cruz
Martínez was brutally murdered in 1968 (likely because of her student
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activism and/or a relationship with a revolutionary leader), Guatemalan

newspapers emphasized that her murder was a loss to the nation because
her body—the national symbol—had been violated. Reflecting on her
murder, La Hora editor Clemente Marroquín Rojas stated that “nothing
did more damage to our sense of civilization than the murder of Rogelia
Cruz Martínez, this killing of a woman” (Erlick 2004, 107–108). According
to newspaper reports, Cruz Martínez’s “body[,] wearing only a brassiere,”
showed signs of rape (El Imparcial January 12, 1968). Countless journalistic
and semifictionalized accounts in the months that followed added to the
sensational murder, suggesting that her body was skinned and had its
breasts removed, and some proposed she was garroted to death. Detail-
ing how the body of Rogelia Cruz Martínez became sensationalized into
fiction, Mary Jane Treacy (2001) suggests that “Rogelia the Beauty Queen”
fell into politics as an image made by the press and then destroyed by her
killers and subsequent portrayals in the press. Treacy (2001, 45) argues
that, “because she entered the public arena and transgressed its rules,
[Cruz Martínez] became an image upon which vengeance was taken, wit-
nessed, and enjoyed”—a practice that the state and its agents embraced
during the civil war. It is precisely this practice that is instrumental in
setting the stage for reviewing violated bodies today.
GENDERED TERROR AT THE HEIGHT OF LA VIOLENCIA, 1978–1984

During the civil war, the Guatemalan armed forces promoted and prac-
ticed counterinsurgency through the use of traditional conceptions of
gender roles and identities established earlier in the century. The Guate-
malan military displayed images of Ladino women who transgressed the
norms of prescribed behavior in nation-building public service ads and
regularly published cadaver reports in newspapers. As with Cruz Mar-
tínez, transgressing and violent women—those who had or could have
involvement with guerrilla groups—were constructed as threats based on
the conception of women’s moral fragility and their roles as primary re-
producers of society.
Full-page advertisements appeared in the early 1980s to depict individu-
als considered “dangerous” to Guatemalans and the nation. The ads urged
readers to turn in these individuals to the authorities. What is unsettling
to the viewer is the youth of the subjects and the inordinate number of
young women portrayed as threats. The display of young Ladino female
guerrillas in government-sponsored advertisements shows that women,
because of their naïveté (or lack of a “sound, disposing mind,” see La Re-
vista de la Guardia Civil August 15, 1946), required guidance so as to not be
lured by Marxist ideologies. Expanding on the pattern established earlier
in the century, these ads describe women as threats because, as teach-
ers and caregivers, they had access to susceptible youths. Advertisements
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suggested a need to tame and control women who would not be tradi-
tionally considered participants in politics or insurgency. Once defined
as threats through their gender, they became dispensable. In the midst
of La Violencia, the military separated citizens into those who mattered
and those who did not, an act that normalized violence and provided the
moral justification for the impunity that undergirds today’s femicides and
murders of thousands of men.
Most advertisements mirror Lidia Amparo Santos Chacón’s story,
which showed respected professionals who, according to the anonymous
authors of the ads, became involved in the destruction of themselves and
their country because of confused idealism and/or some foreign pressure.
All individuals are described as threats to the country and its way of life
because of their purported involvement in terrorism and crime. Women
are portrayed as both individuals in need of rescuing and threats:
Lidia Amparo Santos Chacón, alias “Yali” or “Julia,” is a young Guatemalan

teacher who in her attempts to change Guatemala, chose the extremist path of ter-
ror and violence without realizing that in doing so, she became an instrument of
interests foreign to the authentic destiny of our country. . . . [She] took advantage
of her work as a teacher for the Casa Central school in Guatemala City by involv-
ing immature young women, and attaining their enrollment in the subversive
activities of the extremist communist group called ORPA.
Because of her subversive and extreme acts, Lidia Amparo Santos Chacón,
alias “Yali” or “Julia,” is a danger to you and your loved ones. (Prensa Libre
December 6, 1982, 25)
In this account, Chacón is beyond salvation. The authors link her youth
and gender to her wayward path. Chacón is not an agent but a “ves-
sel” used by foreign interests to entice young women by taking advan-
tage of her role as a teacher. Such transgressions depict women as falling
from a position of privilege to the role of a criminal/terrorist, and they
are a common motif in ads that aimed to demonstrate the dangers of
social activism to “well-intentioned” young men and women. But they
also were intended for the general public, as warnings about the criminal
next door.
The internalization of these warnings is evidenced in ads that families
affected by counterinsurgency violence took out in newspapers to differ-
entiate their disappeared loved ones from the antinational militant that
Chacón’s story represented. Thelma del Socorro Valdivia’s husband, for
example, sought the return of his wife on the grounds that she was sim-
ply “a homemaker who dedicated herself exclusively to her home” (Prensa
Libre April 4, 1981, 8). Her kidnapping by hooded men armed with ma-
chine guns and traveling in a van with tinted windows was, according to
Socorro Valdivia’s husband, an error given that she complied with what
was expected of her gender and was not engaged in any activities outside
her home.
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Advertisements like the one that represented Chacón demanded the

vigilance and involvement of all readers in ending insurgency through
the surveillance of women who engaged in any way outside their homes.
The overrepresentation of women in these ads evince the role of the sur-
veillance of females in counterinsurgency strategies. These advertise-
ments advocate the control of women in particular but can be extended to
other citizens who are deemed dispensable.
Counterinsurgency advertisements detail the practices through which
it became possible to justify the killing of men and women. They show
how hidden powers became responsible for the dispersion of citizenship
status—whether you do or do not matter—and maintenance of national
order. They also demonstrate how “extremism” understood as antifemale
behavior (during the first part of the twentieth century), communism
(during La Violencia), or gang involvement (today) became a justification
for social cleansing with impunity. By accepting the public violation of
women who transgress gender norms, society condoned the violation of
any transgressing citizen.
RAPE AND OVERKILL: ROOTING FEMICIDE IN SOCIAL AND LEGAL IMPUNITY
During La Violencia, the preferred tools for inflicting pain included

rape and overkill (murder and torture exceeding the force necessary to
terminate life). The bodies of female victims today regularly display evi-
dence of both in ways that resonate with the cadavers displayed during
La Violencia. Cadaver reports displayed how female transgressors were
disciplined—always understating and mostly obliterating any evidence
of the perpetrators. The tortured female was a particular site for rewriting
the Guatemalan nation-state, and the bodies its agents produced became
emblematic of the impunity with which the armed forces and paramili-
taries functioned. Because far fewer women than men were killed during
the war (roughly 15 percent of all deaths), cadaver reports of female vic-
tims during La Violencia are unusual and make up less than 10 percent of
all cadaver accounts (Ball, Kobrak, and Spirer 1999). During La Violencia,
the victim’s gender and ethnicity played a pivotal role in determining the
type and method of torture, forms of body disposal, and forms of report-
ing on violated cadavers.
Most victims during the civil war were Maya, many of whom were
killed in massacres that are nearly absent from newspapers with urban
Ladino audiences. Indigenous women were killed almost twice as often as
Ladinas during La Violencia. In interviews, Mayan refugee women detail
witnessing rapes, public eviscerations of pregnant women, postmortem
lacerations, seemingly ritual burning of women and men alive in places of
worship, public decapitations, and maiming. Prior to mass assassinations,
women were raped in front of their loved ones and community members
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(tape-recorded communications between the author and twelve anony-

mous refugee women in refugee camps in Campeche and Quintana Roo,
Mexico, May 1994). Close to 90 percent of all rape victims are believed to
have been Maya (Ball et al. 1999). Although the removal of the fetus from
the body of a pregnant woman was a common precursor to assassinations
during a massacre, evidence of evisceration, as in the following account,
was a rarity in the newspaper record (Torres 1999):
A woman’s cadaver was found: It was noted that the woman measured 1.60 me-
ters in height. The cadaver was already in an advanced state of decomposition. It
showed multiple blows and a hole in the abdominal region. (Prensa Libre October
26, 1982, 40)
The symbolic appropriation of the community’s future often followed

the rape and was completed by placing the cadaver on display so that
those about to be massacred would see it. The foregoing account is evi-
dence of the armed forces’ public defilement of life, and particularly in-
digenous life, during La Violencia. According to the anthropologist Diane
Nelson (1999, 326), insurgents were treated as people who were “like Indi-
ans: expendable, worthless, bereft of civil and human rights.”
In postwar Guatemala, where the state encourages people to forget the
civil war, the evidence of massacres is still a sensitive topic. Given the
country’s history of structural racism, the underreporting of massacres
in newspapers during La Violencia can be analyzed as tacit acceptance
of the murder of Maya. Newspaper editors and reporters suggest that the
armed forces curtailed and surveyed their access and ability to report on
massacres in newspapers during La Violencia and that reporting on mas-
sacres not only was logistically difficult but also carried significant risks
to the personal safety of journalists, photographers, and editors (personal
communication between the author and anonymous Prensa Libre and El
Imparcial editors and reporters, Guatemala City, 2005).
As the culturally ideal vessels of the Guatemalan family, female Ladino
cadavers were more frequently displayed with signs of overkill and rape.
Female transgressors were punished more forcefully than their male
counterparts precisely because the moral costs of defilement were greater.
In cases where women showed signs of overkill, as in the following ac-
count, journalists tended to include very subtle signs of disapproval:
young woman. Under the Río Seco Bridge, kilometer 127 of the route from Río
Bravo to Tiquisate, a cadaver of a young woman, around 26 years of age, was
found. She was shot to death after having been tortured. The unknown woman
was 1.5 meters high, had white skin and, as a detail that could lead to her being
identified, she had two gold crowns on her upper teeth. (Prensa Libre June 20,
1978, 2)
This account has an implicit request for recognition, and in the capital,
the combination of her skin color and gold crowns suggest the victim’s
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elite status. Such details were more common in accounts describing female
victims. With the body of a woman, this seemingly typical description
signals a form of torture often reserved or emphasized for female victims:
rape. In Guatemala, rape was typically associated with two types of viola-
tions: massacres and capture by state or parastate authorities. Parastate
authorities working as hidden powers then and today are believed to be
responsible for femicides. Most cadaver reports of female bodies during
La Violencia detail rape as part of the necrographic maps or torture signs
found on bodies (Torres 2005). Focusing on rape is a technique that draws
us into the current practice of re-viewing victims of violence instead of the
social supports or agents of violence.
During La Violencia, the focus of rape on the victims rather than on the
perpetrators reinforced the feelings of vulnerability that politically moti-
vated violence hoped to instill. Because of its power to shame and violate
women’s characters as well as their bodies, rape became a tool for torture.
Parastate forces not only raped women but also defaced their bodies to
ensure the viewer’s attention focused on the acts of torture. This type of
rape, which Sylvanna Falcon (2001, 41) defines as “national security rape,”
is a result of the hypermasculinization of a militarized environment in
which rape becomes a tool to shame women and men. Making rapes
public was part of the process of national security rape, where the act
of viewing was intended to draw an audience into one final act of viola-
tion. Re-viewing victims became an act of social complicity that allowed
for the construction of Guatemalan newspaper readers into a “bystander
community” (Huggins, Haritos-Fatouros, and Zimbardo 2002, 137). The
establishment of Ladino readers as a bystander community worked to
sustain the atrocities of La Violencia through a type of participant inac-
tion: readers re-viewed the atrocity but remained unwilling or unable
to oppose it.
In the subsequent account of rape, the assassins attempted to obscure
the victim’s identity but ensured that the act of violation and its effect on
her body would become public by placing the cadaver near the University
of San Carlos during the morning rush hour:
The cadaver of a lady approximately 23 years of age was found yesterday on 31st
Street and 10th Avenue, Zone 12, El Bosque Residences, at 6 am. Its face and cra-
nium were completely destroyed, making a full identification impossible. . . . [She
was] nude and showed clear signs of having been raped, said the volunteer fire-
men. (Prensa Libre April 11, 1983, 19)
Her body was placed for commuters to see in a middle-class resi-
dential area as they traveled to and from the university. In the forego-
ing newspaper account, the body is re-presented—both textually and
photographically—for a national audience. The publication of the account
completes the exercise of power that was begun on the victim’s body and
makes the body, not the perpetrators of the crime, the focus of attention.
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Playing up the silences commonly associated with rape further rein-

forces the sense of insecurity gained from exposure to savagely tortured
bodies. Because the rapists were the authorities—members of the spe-
cial and regular armed forces and police—they had impunity. Instead
of bringing the perpetrators to justice, making rapes public only further
denigrated victims and threatened the safety of both the victims and their
families (Recuperación de la Memoria Histórica 1998). Building on the
violence, shame, and secrecy commonly associated with rape, the design-
ers of Guatemala’s counterinsurgency policies attempted to force women
and men—both indigenous and nonindigenous—into a symbolically
subservient role in which military impunity and authority could remain
unquestioned. Grounded in the practices of impunity begun earlier in the
century, military and paramilitary forces incorporated rape as a weapon
of governance during La Violencia.
The display of tortured women suggests their frequency (99 percent)
as the prime victims of sexual crimes and rape (Ball et al. 1999). How-
ever, the display of their tortured bodies underrepresents the frequency
of their overkill. Taking into account dominant gender paradigms in Gua-
temala, defilement of female bodies may have crossed the boundaries of
what the public considered acceptable during La Violencia’s already aber-
rant displays of violence. Although such accounts are exceptional during
La Violencia, they bear striking similarities to the femicide accounts that
have littered newspapers since 2000. The increased frequency with which
evidence of overkill appears on female cadavers today speaks to the ex-
tent to which the display of postwar violence has surpassed that of La
Violencia.
As early as 1978, women’s bodies were found with obliterated faces and
signs of overkill. One such example describes a “lady” who “had eight
bullet perforations in different areas and crushing blows to the face that
made her practically unrecognizable” (Prensa Libre July 29, 1978, 66). Over-
killed women were often described as youths, and in all accounts, jour-
nalists subtly questioned these acts of violence. This type of questioning
included alluding to a perpetrator who was generally absent in other ac-
counts of torture; using adjectives to suggest that the attack was exces-
sively violent; and the attribution of emotions like shock, surprise, or emo-
tional disturbance to unnamed witnesses. Journalists subtly challenged
the bounds of state-sponsored violence in this account:
two young women were beheaded in zone 8 yesterday: Cadavers of two be-
headed young women were found yesterday morning in Zone 8. So far the mo-
tives or perpetrators of the crime are unknown. The neighbors of Zone 8 were sur-
prised at the finding of the cadavers and at the way that they were assassinated,
and they called the municipal firemen to take away the unfortunate women from
the eyes of the curious, especially the children. One of the cadavers . . . showed
that not all of its skin had been severed from the body. It is estimated that the
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victimizers used a forceful instrument that was too sharp and you could also see
particular bruising in the arms and legs where blows were received. (Prensa Libre
January 8, 1981, 8)
In both cadaver reports, the women’s faces are obscured, either through
the removal of the head or through beatings that rendered them beyond
recognition. The account noted the youth of the victims while subtly indi-
cating that the assassinations were unusual and repulsive: the additional
qualifications given to the female cadavers suggest that finding defiled
female bodies was less tolerable than the usual parade of male cadavers.
Although most reports discuss the injury, the reports presented here char-
acterize the weapons used as “crushing” or “forceful,” alluding to the use
of excessive force.
Reflecting on the documents discussed here, one Guatemalan journalist
interviewed in 2001 stated that such accounts evoked the idea of counter-
insurgency fear: a fear of unspeakable or unknowable torture and a fear of
the public shame that identification and display could bring. Women were
common victims for the purposes of creating such fears. At the same time,
the constant presence of tortured and violated bodies during La Violencia
began to anesthetize readers. Instead of being exceptional, violations of
women became common and ultimately normal.
CONCLUSION
Femicide as the socially tolerated murder of women in Guatemala re-

lies on the presence of systemic impunity, historically rooted gender in-
equalities, and the pervasive normalization of violence as a social relation.
The entrenchment of the social supports of femicide has been a gradual
process in Guatemala through which women’s rights in particular and
citizens’ rights more generally have been eroded. Culturally supported
through the promotion of unequal gender roles and portrayals of women
as minimally human, gender-based violence came to find legal and social
acceptance during the first half of the twentieth century. This legal leni-
ency effectively provided impunity and helped foster a more generalized
violence in Guatemalan society. Since then, security forces have expanded
acceptable levels of violence.
Early in the twentieth century, social constructions of gender that re-
stricted women’s roles and possibilities as well as customary and state
law that asserted women’s subordination to men reinforced (and at times
explicitly condoned) gender-based violence. Women who failed to live up
to society’s expectations of them as diligent, docile producers and repro-
ducers could be beaten. Although judges did not explicitly affirm these
notions, by not contradicting them or not doling out stiff sentences, they
contributed to the conditions whereby gender-based violence propagated.
Informed and influenced by patriarchal regimes, these cultural and legal
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premises helped the dictatorships of Estrada Cabrera and Ubico legiti-

mize violence over less powerful groups. As the legal historian Douglas
Hay (1992) argues, state violence and private violence are reciprocal and
reinforcing. Gendered violence, in this context, became a powerful tool to
control both women and men. What has changed in the postwar era is that
state violence and private violence are no longer so easily distinguished.
Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the state often abdi-
cated its responsibility to guarantee the safety of its citizens (particularly
women). As generals took power after 1954, and gender-based violence
expanded (e.g., the use of rape as a weapon), women’s bodies increasingly
became sites of terror.
In another pattern of change over time, efforts to arrest perpetrators of
gender-based violence have decreased dramatically since the early twen-
tieth century. In general, in the first half of the twentieth century, when
women reported gender-based violence, the accused were arrested. Af-
ter the “Macheteador de Mujeres” had “so savagely macheted” Cristina
Chicoj, for example, the police pursued him from his highland village
near San Juan Sacatepéquez to the Guatemala City train station (La Gaceta
May 24, 1931). In contrast, today police make arrests in only 2 percent of
the approximately five thousand homicides each year in Guatemala. More
disturbing still, of the 5,027 femicides from 2000 to 2009, only eleven per-
petrators were convicted (Fisher 2007; McKinley 2007; Network in Solidar-
ity with the People of Guatemala 2008; Prensa Libre June 4, 2010).
Throughout the twentieth century in Guatemala, the state did not just
condone gender inequity through its legal practices; it combined patriar-
chy with the use of violence as a tool for governance. Evident most clearly
during La Violencia, military regimes made gender-based violence a criti-
cal part of the exercise and reproduction of power in Guatemala. The mili-
tary state became an active participant in the promotion of violence against
women as it used women’s bodies to legitimize its role as a patriarch.
Yet the murders of women during La Violencia and today are simi-
lar to each other and specific to Guatemala because of the almost-half-
century-old tradition of public display of their violation and the sensa-
tional quality attached to re-viewing victims. Beginning with Rogelia
Cruz Martínez, Guatemalans who re-viewed bodies of tortured women
also became bystanders to atrocity. Even before La Violencia, women who
transgressed gender norms through their involvement in politics came
to be defined as citizens who did not matter and thus warranted being
targets of state-sponsored violence. Just as police and courts expanded the
possibilities of male violence against women, they sought to define female
political participation or women’s aggression as a justification for violent
exclusion. Intimating that victims have connections to organized crime
or insurgents justifies curtailing their civil rights and by extension ap-
proaching femicides as exceptions to the rule of law. Earlier in the century,
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infidelity or failure to perform domestic duties warranted beating. Today,

women’s transgressions are used as social justification for murder.
Establishing the historical precedence of gender-based violence in
Guatemala reveals what the current obsession with statistics obscures:
the historical development and the social and juridical acceptance of im-
punity and gender inequity, as well as the normalization of violence as
a social and political relationship. These conditions facilitated and still
perpetuate the overkill of women. Although the alarming numbers of
murdered and tortured women could be framed as a simple outgrowth
of La Violencia, vestiges of genocide, or the sadism of drug traffickers,
gangs, and paramilitary groups, examining the social support networks
of gender-based violence compels us to confront the potential horrors
of patriarchy. Uncovering the historical precursors to femicide reveals a
pervasive tolerance of violence, which ultimately controls its population,
male and female alike.
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P5331.indb 164 10/15/10 1:53:52 PM

R E SEA RCH R EPORT S A N D NOT E S
HOUSEHOLD SHOCKS, CHILD LABOR,

AND CHILD SCHOOLING
Evidence from Guatemala
William F. Vásquez
Fairfield University
Alok K. Bohara
University of New Mexico
Abstract: Using data from the National Survey of Standards of Living conducted
in Guatemala in 2000, this article tests the hypothesis that Guatemalan households
use child labor and reduce child schooling to cope with household shocks. First, the
authors use factor analysis to estimate the latent household propensity to natural
disasters and socioeconomic shocks. Then, they estimate bivariate probit models to
identify the determinants of child labor and schooling, including household propen-
sity to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks. Results suggest that households
use child labor to cope with natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks. In contrast,
the authors found no evidence that suggests that households reduce child schooling
to cope with shocks. Findings also indicate that poor households are more likely to
use child labor and schooling reduction as strategies to cope with socioeconomic
shocks.
INTRODUCTION
Child labor affects the current and future welfare of children. In the
short run, child labor exposes children to unsafe working environments
and prevents normal child development. Child labor also reduces the time
available for school and the quality of schooling (Binder and Scrogin 1999;
Psacharopoulus 1997). Given that schooling is associated with poverty
P5331.indb 165 10/15/10 1:53:52 PM

alleviation, disease reduction, and fertility choices (Glewwe 2002; World

Bank 2005), child labor may have a negative impact on the welfare of chil-
dren in the long run.1
Child labor has been traditionally considered a household response
to income poverty (Amin, Quayes, and Rives 2004; Jensen and Nielsen
1997; Ray 2002) and labor market imperfections (Dumas 2007). A more
recent strand of literature suggests that child labor is a household strategy
to cope with natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks (Dendir 2007;
Guarcello, Mealli, and Rosati 2003). Households may also reduce invest-
ments in a child’s schooling to cope with household shocks (Jacoby and
Skoufias 1997). Poor households are more likely to use child labor as a cop-
ing strategy given their lack of assets that could be used to recover from
household shocks (Beegle, Dehejia, and Gatti 2006). Thus, the negative ef-
fect of such coping strategies on the current and future welfare of children
is more significant among poor households.
This study tests the hypothesis that Guatemalan households use child
labor and reduce child schooling to cope with natural disasters and socio-
economic shocks. We used factor analysis to estimate the latent household
propensity to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks based on infor-
mation on household shocks included in the 2000 National Survey of Liv-
ing Standards (Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida, or ENCOVI).
This approach provides a stronger analytical framework to estimate shock
indices than traditional methods such as binary variables and the total
amount of reported shocks that do not account for measurement errors
and restrict different household shocks to have similar effects. We then
included estimated propensities in bivariate probit models to investigate
the effect of natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks on child labor
and schooling. We also analyzed differences in responses to household
shocks among nonpoor, poor, and extremely poor. Results indicate that
households tend to use child labor to cope with natural disasters and so-
cioeconomic shocks. In contrast, we found no evidence that households
reduce child schooling to cope with shocks. Findings also indicate that
poor households are more likely to use child labor and schooling reduc-
tion as strategies to cope with socioeconomic shocks.
We have organized the rest of the article as follows: we first describe
the background, then present the theoretical framework, describe the data
and variables used in the study, present the econometric methodology,
present the results, and finally provide conclusions.
1. An alternative view of child labor argues that children may benefit from work expe-
rience appropriate to their age. Benefits include human capital formation through work
experience, as well as in-kind and money earnings. For a detailed discussion on the benefits
of child labor, see Bourdillon (2006).
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HOUSEHOLD SHOCKS, CHILD LABOR, AND CHILD SCHOOLING 167
Table 1 Child Labor and Nonenrollment Ratios, by Region, Gender, and Area
Child Labor Nonenrollment
Boys Girls Boys Girls
Region Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban
Metropolitan 31.5 13.0 17.7 9.2 37.0 7.3 29.1 10.6
North 40.2 15.4 18.2 9.6 35.9 18.6 46.1 23.6
Northeast 25.8 14.7 6.9 9.6 29.9 10.8 31.2 16.1
Northwest 32.6 18.6 14.8 11.9 32.9 17.7 44.5 23.0
Central 34.6 21.8 17.9 22.7 28.9 14.8 31.8 17.9
Southeast 31.8 16.3 8.1 11.9 24.6 10.1 29.3 14.7
Southwest 30.1 23.7 18.3 12.0 22.5 16.7 33.7 20.1
Peten 33.0 23.6 8.6 13.0 31.7 18.7 35.3 15.9
Country 32.9 18.0 14.8 12.4 29.4 14.0 36.7 17.5
Note: We calculated these rates using the 2000 Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida
(ENCOVI). The rates are expressed in percentages of children between five and sixteen
years of age.
BACKGROUND
The incidence of child labor has gradually increased in Guatemala and

is among the highest in Latin America (Guarcello et al. 2003). The Inter-
national Labour Organization’s International Programme for the Elimi-
nation of Child Labour (IPEC 2003) reports that 7.9 percent of children
between seven and fourteen years of age worked for a salary or at home in
1994. This percentage increased to 23.5 percent in 2002. The average num-
ber of working hours per week was greater than thirty-five in all kinds
of activities. Such large amounts of working hours may reduce the time
available for child schooling. In addition, a significant number of children
work in unsafe environments. According to the 2002 National Survey of
Employment and Income (Encuesta Nacional de Empleo e Ingresos, or
ENEI), at least 17,350 children worked in domestic jobs, 3,700 children
worked in the fireworks industry, and 850 children worked collecting and
sorting garbage. Other kinds of hazardous jobs included agriculture, min-
ing and rock breaking, and sexual activities (IPEC 2003).
Table 1 presents the incidence of child labor by region, area, and gen-
der for children between five and sixteen years old. The percentage of
boys and girls working for a salary in rural areas is greater than in urban
areas. The child labor rate is greater for boys than for girls in almost each
stratum excluding urban areas in the Central region.2 Boys in rural areas
are more likely to work than are boys in urban areas. Although the rural
2. Guatemala is divided into eight political regions for sampling purposes: Metropoli-
tan, Central, North, Southeast, Southwest, Northeast, Northwest, and Petén.
P5331.indb 167 10/15/10 1:53:53 PM

percentage of working girls is greater in the Metropolitan, North, North-

west, and Southwest regions, the urban percentage is greater in other re-
gions. The maximum percentage of child labor is reported for boys in the
Rural North region (40.2 percent). The minimum corresponds to girls in
the Rural Northeast region (6.9 percent). Table 2 shows ethnic differen-
tials in child labor. Indigenous children are more likely to work than are
nonindigenous children in almost all regions, with the exception of the
Southeast for boys and the Northeast and Petén for girls.
Educational indicators point to low levels of schooling. According to
the World Bank (2003), the illiteracy rate in Guatemala was 31 percent in
2000. This rate is among the highest in Latin America, behind only Nica-
ragua and Haiti. On average, individuals older than fourteen years of age
have 4.3 years of schooling. Table 1 shows that children in rural areas are
less likely to attend school. In 2000, 29.4 percent of boys and 36.7 percent of
girls between five and sixteen years old in rural areas were not enrolled in
school. These percentages are greater than the urban percentages (14 per-
cent for boys and 17.5 percent for girls). Nonenrollment ratios are greater
for rural areas across all regions (see table 1).
Table 2 presents significant differences in nonenrollment ratios between
indigenous and nonindigenous children. In 2000, more than 28 percent of
indigenous boys were not enrolled in school, for a difference of 8.8 percent
above nonindigenous boys. The difference between indigenous and non-
indigenous girls is also substantial (16.3 percent). The nonenrollment ratios
are less for indigenous boys only in the Central and Southeast regions.
Indigenous girls are less likely to be enrolled in school than are nonindig-
enous girls in each region. However, the difference between indigenous
and nonindigenous girls in the Central region seems to be minimal.
Demand-side factors seem to be very important for not enrolling chil-
dren in school (see table 3). More than 30 percent of children out of school
in rural and urban areas report income poverty as the main reason for not
enrolling in school. The lack of interest in schooling is the second reason
in urban areas and the third reason in rural areas. The second and third
reasons for not enrolling boys and girls in school in rural areas are work-
ing for wages and working at home, respectively. Although factors associ-
ated with the supply of education were reported as reasons to not enroll in
school, the low percentages of closed class, school distance, and no school
in the community suggest that Guatemala has advanced significantly to-
ward universal school coverage (World Bank 2005).
Guatemalan households are vulnerable to socioeconomic shocks such
as job loss, inflation, business closure, decreases in international prices of
produced goods, and crime, among others. Guatemala is also prone to nat-
ural disasters. According to Charvériat (2000), twenty-eight disasters oc-
curred in Guatemala between 1979 and 1999, for an average of 0.9 disasters
per year. Guatemala has the largest number of fatalities due to disasters
P5331.indb 168 10/15/10 1:53:53 PM

P5331.indb 169
Table 2 Child Labor and Nonenrollment Ratios, by Region, Gender, and Ethnicity
Child Labor Nonenrollment
Boys Girls Boys Girls
Non- Non- Non- Non-
Region Indigenous indigenous Indigenous indigenous Indigenous indigenous Indigenous indigenous
Metropolitan 37.8 16.8 31.5 10.4 40.0 9.2 38.9 10.4
North 39.5 27.8 20.5 12.6 33.8 19.9 45.1 20.8
Northeast 47.2 21.9 8.1 10.6 36.1 17.9 43.2 20.1
Northwest 38.6 26.1 18.3 14.0 30.7 24.1 42.9 28.8
Central 52.6 26.6 34.3 16.6 22.8 26.6 28.4 28.0
Southeast 22.2 30.8 18.5 11.5 16.7 19.4 25.9 23.9
Southwest 39.0 29.4 22.5 16.0 23.5 18.5 36.6 22.0
Peten 53.3 32.9 7.6 13.8 34.4 25.6 32.6 26.3
Country 41.9 26.8 21.8 13.3 28.9 20.1 38.9 22.6
Note: We calculated these rates using the 2000 Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida (ENCOVI). The rates are expressed in percentages of
children between five and sixteen years of age.
10/15/10 1:53:54 PM
Table 3 Reason for Not Attending School, by Area and Gender

Boys Girls
Reason Rural Urban Rural Urban
Illness 2.5 5.1 2.1 4.2
Closed Class 0.9 1.5 1.2 0.6
Working at Home 0.8 1.5 18.3 10.3
Working for Wage 25.9 15.0 7.7 8.5
Income Poverty 32.7 39.4 30.8 41.2
Not Interested 16.7 24.8 18.2 18.5
School Distance 1.9 — 3.5 1.5
Not School in the Community 2.2 — 2.2 0.9
Age 8.6 5.8 7.2 5.2
Other 7.8 6.9 8.8 9.1
Note: We calculated these rates using the 2000 Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida
(ENCOVI). The rates are expressed in percentages of children between five and sixteen
years of age.
in Central America, for a total of 24,139 people, or 2.2 fatalities per thou-
sand habitants (based on the population in 1995). Estimated losses were
more than US$3.062.5 billion or 17.3 percent of the gross domestic prod-
uct (GDP) in 1995.3 As a response to its propensity for natural disasters,
Guatemala created the National Coordinator for Reduction of Disasters
(Coordinadora Nacional para la Reducción de Desastres, or CONRED),
which aims to reduce household vulnerability to natural disasters and
coordinates national efforts during and after a disaster.4
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
Following Basu and Van (1998), parents are assumed to be benevolent

and maximize the child’s utility function U = U(X, S, W), where X repre-
sents consumption greater than the minimum sustenance level, S is time
available for schooling, and W is time available for child labor. The utility
3. Hurricane Stan is a more recent example of the vulnerability of Guatemala to natural

disasters. The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (2005) reported
that Hurricane Stan affected 3.5 million people, or 34 percent of the population, in 2005.
Direct effects were observed in more than 950 communities. More than 42,900 individuals
had to live in temporary shelters. The losses were calculated at more than US$983 million,
or 3.4 percent of the GDP in 2004.
4. Other official institutions that assist households in coping with household shocks in-
clude the Secretariat of Food Security, the Presidential Planning Secretariat, and the Min-
istry of Agriculture. Although the main focus of these institutions is on poverty allevia-
tion, their actions may help reduce the propensity of child labor as a strategy to cope with
household shocks.
P5331.indb 170 10/15/10 1:53:54 PM

function U is positively related to child consumption and schooling, and

negatively related to child labor. That is,
⭸U ⭸U
ⱖ 0, ⱖ 0,
⭸X ⭸S
and
⭸U
ⱕ 0.
⭸W
Parents’ choices are subject to budget and time restrictions:
PX + PsS ≤ (Y − PX0) + ωW (1a)

W+S≤T (1b)
where P is the price vector, PS is the price of schooling, Y is the house-

hold income earned by adults, X0 is the minimum household sustenance
level, ω is the child wage, and T is the total amount of nonleisure time
available for schooling and labor. This model is similar to the theoreti-
cal framework Ray (2002) used, with the difference being that parents are
assumed to ensure a minimum level of sustenance for the household
(i.e., X0) rather than first choosing consumption for adults.
As a result of the maximization problem, assuming separability be-
tween child consumption and leisure, we derived the following simulta-
neous equations:
W* = L(CH, FAM, COM, S*, ω, PS, Y*) (2a)

S* = L(CH, FAM, COM, W*, ω, PS, Y*) (2b)
where CH, FAM, and COM are child, family, and community’s charac-
teristics, respectively. Y* is equal to Y – PX0, the disposable income for
child consumption. W* and S* are the optimal choices on child labor and
schooling, respectively.
The effects of child, family, and community characteristics on W* and
S* depend on the type of such characteristics. Child ethnicity may have a
negative impact on schooling, particularly if languages differ across eth-
nic groups and education is not provided in such languages. There is also
evidence that suggests that mothers have stronger preferences for child
schooling than fathers (Ridao-Cano 2001) and that households may treat
boys and girls differently (Binder 1998; Emerson and Portela Souza 2007).
Size imposes larger costs on the household and therefore may reduce
schooling and increase child labor (Patrinos and Psacharopoulos 1997).
Households in more developed communities have more access to public
schools, which would increase schooling rates. The development of labor
P5331.indb 171 10/15/10 1:53:55 PM

markets in such communities may be another factor affecting child labor

choices.
Because nonleisure time T is fixed, an increase (decrease) in time al-
located to child labor will decrease (increase) the time allocated to school-
ing. This implies that child labor and schooling are substitutes; therefore,
we expected their effect on each other to be negative. That is,
⭸S *
ⱕ 0,
⭸W *
and
⭸W *
ⱕ 0.
⭸S *
We expected negative price effects on schooling. In contrast, because child

labor is considered to decrease child utility, we expected price effects on
child labor to be positive. Thus, expected price effects are as follows:
⭸S * ⭸S * ⭸W * ⭸W *
ⱕ 0, ⱕ 0, ⱖ 0 , and ⱖ 0.
⭸␻ ⭸ Ps ⭸␻ ⭸ Ps
Under the benevolent-parents assumption, we expected disposable in-

come to have a positive effect on child schooling and a negative effect on
child labor. That is,
⭸S *
ⱖ 0,
⭸Y *
and
⭸W *
ⱕ 0.
⭸Y *
It is worth noting that household shocks (e.g., natural disasters, socioeco-

nomic shocks) may decrease household income from adults. In addition,
household survival expenditures (e.g., health costs) may increase as a re-
sult of household shocks (Del Ninno and Marini 2005). Parents may send
children to work to compensate for income losses and to pay for survival
expenditures. In addition, parents may not have enough income to enroll
children in school. Poor households are more likely to implement such cop-
ing strategies because they usually lack other assets to cope with house-
hold shocks. Given this potential household behavior to cope with shocks,
and to structure the analysis, we tested the following hypotheses:
H1: Natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks increase the time allocated to
child labor.
P5331.indb 172 10/15/10 1:53:55 PM

H2: Natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks decrease the time allocated to
child schooling.
H3: The impact of natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks is more signifi-
cant among poor households.
DATA AND VARIABLES
In 2000, Guatemala implemented a living standards measurement

survey referred to as Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida 2000
(ENCOVI). The ENCOVI followed a two-stage stratified cluster sampling
design. The stratification consists of rural and urban areas in eight political
regions, for a total of sixteen areas. Households in these areas are classified
in three strata: high, medium, and low income. A total of 11,170 rural and
urban sectors are the primary sampling units (PSUs). In the first stage, the
sampling probability is the same for each PSU. The second stage, in which
households were the secondary sampling units (SSUs), implemented sys-
tematic sampling. Groups of twelve and six households were formed for
rural and urban areas, respectively. Finally, 7,276 households provided the
information that ENCOVI presented. We selected a subsample of 7,332
children between five and sixteen years to conduct this study.
The ENCOVI includes information on child activities and binary indi-
cators for household shocks. That information is used to define child labor
as children working at least one hour in the market for a monetary com-
pensation. Households were also asked whether they experienced any of
the shocks listed in the questionnaire over the previous twelve months
(the appendix here presents the questions in Spanish). The list of shocks
included natural disasters such as earthquakes, droughts, floods, storms,
hurricanes, plagues, landslides, forest fires, and loss of harvest. The ques-
tionnaire also included socioeconomic shocks: loss of employment of any
member; lowered income of any member; bankruptcy of family business;
illness or serious accident of a working member of the household; death of
working member of the household; abandonment by the household head;
fire in the house, business, or property; criminal act; land dispute; loss
of cash or in-kind assistance; fall in prices of products in the household
business, business closing; massive layoffs; and general price increases.
Household propensity to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks may
influence the incidence of shocks.
About 28 percent of the sampled households suffered at least one natu-
ral disaster, and almost 70 percent reported at least one socioeconomic
shock. The most reported socioeconomic shocks are general increase in
prices, illness or serious accident of a working member of the household,
lowered income of any member, and loss of employment of any member.
Correlation estimates are less than 0.2 for most pairs of shocks, with the
exception of the correlation between plague and losts of harvest (0.27),
P5331.indb 173 10/15/10 1:53:55 PM

Table 4 Definition of Variables
Variables Definition Mean SD Min. Max.
SCHOOLING Is child schooling? (yes = 1; no = 0) 0.738 0.439 0 1
WORKING Is child working? (yes = 1; no = 0) 0.207 0.404 0 1
HHSHOCK Number of negative events in past 1.631 1.454 0 14
12 months
NATDIS Household propensity to natural 0 0.697 −0.420 7.551
disasters
SOCECON Household propensity to socioeco- 0 0.685 −0.455 7.087
nomic shocks
EXTPOOR Is the household below the extreme 0.179 0.384 0 1
poverty line? (yes = 1; no = 0)
POOR Is the household below the poverty 0.449 0.497 0 1
line? (yes = 1; no = 0)
AGE Child age 10.155 3.421 5 16
MALE Child gender (male =1; female = 0) 0.510 0.500 0 1
INDIGENOUS Child ethnic (indigenous = 1; 0.410 0.490 0 1
otherwise = 0)
MOEDUC Did mother complete elementary 0.118 0.323 0 1
school? (yes = 1; no = 0)
FAEDUC Did father complete elementary 0.154 0.361 0 1
school? (yes = 1; no = 0)
REMITT The log of household income (in 1.077 2.259 0 12.430
thousands of quetzals) from
remittances
HEADMALE Is the household head male? 0.849 0.358 0 1
(yes = 1; no = 0)
HHSIZE Number of household members 7.043 2.419 2 18
RURAL Child location (urban = 0; 0.616 0.486 0 1
rural = 1)
NORTH Does child live in this region? 0.120 0.320 0 1
(yes = 1; no = 0)
NORTHEAST Does child live in this region? 0.070 0.260 0 1
(yes = 1; no = 0)
SOUTHEAST Does child live in this region? 0.110 0.310 0 1
(yes = 1; no = 0)
CENTRAL Does child live in this region? 0.170 0.370 0 1
(yes = 1; no = 0)
SOUTHWEST Does child live in this region? 0.170 0.380 0 1
(yes = 1; no = 0)
NORTHWEST Does child live in this region? 0.190 0.390 0 1
(yes = 1; no = 0)
PETEN Does child live in this region? 0.090 0.290 0 1
(yes = 1; no = 0)
P5331.indb 174 10/15/10 1:53:55 PM

business closing and massive layoffs (0.23), and loss of employment of any
member and lowered income of any member (0.3).
Table 4 presents the definition and descriptive statistics of the variables
used in this study. The variables include indicators for extreme poverty
(EXTPOOR) and general poverty (POOR). The National Institute of Sta-
tistics calculated the poverty indicators using the per capita consumption
approach. The extreme poverty line (1,911 quetzals per year) consisted of
expenditures needed to cover the minimum amount of calories needed to
survive. The general poverty line (4,318 quetzals per year) covered non-
nutritious expenditures as well.5 Other variables used in the study include
child characteristics (AGE, MALE, and INDIGENOUS), family character-
istics including mother’s and father’s education, gender of the household
head, and household size (MOEDUC, FAEDUC, HEADMALE, and HH-
SIZE, respectively), and location variables (URBAN, NORTH, NORTHEAST,
SOUTHEAST, CENTRAL, SOUTHWEST, NORTHWEST, and PETEN).
ECONOMETRIC METHODOLOGY
The information included in ENCOVI can be used in different ways

to investigate the effects of household shocks on child labor and school-
ing. For instance, Guarcello and colleagues (2003) used the information
to estimate the effects of individual and collective household shocks on
child labor. They used binary indicators to classify a household as hit by
a shock if the household reported at least one shock. Although this ap-
proach is suitable for measuring shock incidence, it ignores the propensity
to household shocks and assumes that the effect of being affected by one
or more shocks is the same. Counting the shocks a household has suffered
may be an alternative to account for the occurrence of various shocks.
This approach, however, assumes that different shocks have the same ef-
fect on child labor and schooling.6
This article proposes a different approach to measure the propensity to
household shocks. First, we classified reported household shocks as natu-
ral disasters and socioeconomic shocks. Then, we estimated two indices
to measure the propensity to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks
using factor analysis. We assumed the unobserved household propensity
to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks influenced reported shocks
as follows:
NDi = λi NATDIS + ei (3a)
SEj = λj SOCECON + ej (3b)
5. Using an exchange rate of 7.50 quetzals per U.S. dollar, the poverty and extreme pov-
erty lines are equivalent to $575.73 and $254.80, respectively.
6. We thank an anonymous reviewer for addressing this limitation of counting house-
hold shocks.
P5331.indb 175 10/15/10 1:53:56 PM

where NDi is an indicator that takes the value of one if the household ex-
perienced natural disaster i (e.g., earthquakes, droughts, floods) and zero
otherwise. Similarly, the indicator SEj takes the value of one if the house-
hold was hit by socioeconomic shock j (e.g., loss of employment of any
member, lowered income of any member, bankruptcy of family business)
and zero otherwise. The factors NATDIS and SOCECON are unobserved
common factors that influence the incidence of natural disasters and so-
cioeconomic shocks, respectively. Coefficients λi and λj represent the fac-
tor loadings relating indicators NDi and SEj to latent factors NATDIS and
SOCECON, respectively. The terms ei and ej represent the variance that is
unique to indicators NDi and SEj, respectively, and are independent of the
corresponding factors and all other el.
Factor analysis provides a stronger analytical framework to estimate
shock indices than do traditional methods such as binary variables repre-
senting shock incidence and the total amount of reported shocks. First, fac-
tors can be used as proxies for latent variables, which are unobservable and
inestimable using traditional methods. Therefore, NATDIS and SOCECON
can be interpreted as the latent household propensity to natural disasters
and socioeconomic shocks, respectively. Second, NATDIS and SOCECON
do not restrict different household shocks to equally affect child labor and
schooling, given that factor loadings are allowed to vary across shock in-
dicators. Finally, factor analysis provides estimates that are adjusted for
measurement error, which traditional methods ignore (Brown 2006).
To investigate the impact of natural disasters and socioeconomic
shocks on child labor and schooling, we modeled the optimal choice of
child schooling and labor under the assumption that Equations 2a and 2b
follow a linear form:
S* = X βs + us (4a)
W* = X βw+ uw (4b)
where S* and W* represent the optimal time allocated to child schooling

and labor, respectively. Vector X represents determinants of child school-
ing and labor including child, family, and community characteristics,
as well as the shock indices NATDIS and SOCECON. Vectors βs and βw
include the parameters to be estimated. Finally, us and uw are error terms
that follow a normal joint distribution with mean zero and the same
variance for each child. The error terms us and uw are allowed to be cor-
related to control for potential endogeneity between child schooling and
labor.
Vector X includes AGE, MALE, and INDIGENOUS to control for child
characteristics. Because of potential nonlinear age effects, we also included
age square (AGESQ). We included MOEDUC, FAEDUC, HEADMALE, and
HHSIZE to control for family characteristics, and REMITT to measure the
P5331.indb 176 10/15/10 1:53:56 PM

effect of remittances on child labor and schooling. We included RURAL

and regional dummy variables to control for unobserved community
characteristics. Regional dummy variables are NORTH, NORTHEAST,
SOUTHEAST, CENTRAL, SOUTHWEST, NORTHWEST, and PETEN.
METROPOLITAN is the base region.
Unfortunately, we could not estimate Equation 4a because ENCOVI did
not report the time allocated to child schooling. Alternatively, ENCOVI in-
cluded an indicator on child enrollment in school. Therefore, we replaced
S* and W* with Schooling and Working, respectively. The indicator School-
ing is equal to one when the optimal allocation of time to child schooling
is greater than zero (S* > 0) and zero otherwise. Similarly, Working is an
indicator equal to one when the optimal allocation of time to child labor is
greater than zero (W* > 0) and zero otherwise. The result of this transfor-
mation is a bivariate probit model.
We estimated bivariate probit models including NATDIS and SOCE-
CON to test H1 and H2. Using these factors to estimate the bivariate pro-
bit models allowed us to assess the individual effects of household pro-
pensity to natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks on child labor and
schooling. We also included the interaction of NATDIS and SOCECON
with the poverty indices POOR and EXTPOOR to test H3.
EMPIRICAL RESULTS
Table 5 presents the estimation results of Equations 3a and 3b. Shock

indicators are assumed to be affected by factors NATDIS and SOCECON
if their corresponding Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) statistic is greater than
0.5. Nine indicators on natural disasters are identified to be related to
NATDIS and 14 indicators on socioeconomic shocks are related to SOCE-
CON. Plagues and loss of harvest show the highest factor loadings (0.406),
followed by droughts and storms. The lower factor loading corresponds
to reports on earthquakes (0.154). The highest factor loading for SOCE-
CON corresponds to lowered income of any member (0.456), followed by
massive layoffs (0.422). The lowest factor loading corresponds to death
of working member. We used corresponding factor loadings to estimate
NATDIS and SOCECON, which we then included in probit models to in-
vestigate the effect of natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks on child
labor and schooling.
Table 6 presents the estimation results (i.e., marginal effects) of bivari-
ate probit models, including the effects of natural disaster (NATDIS) and
socioeconomic shocks (SOCECON) on child labor and schooling. In sup-
port of H1, the estimated marginal effects of NATDIS and SOCECON on
the probability of child labor (WORKING) are positive and significant in
Models 1, 3 and 5. This indicates that households use child labor to cope
with natural disasters and socioeconomics shocks. These findings are
P5331.indb 177 10/15/10 1:53:56 PM

Table 5 Factor Analysis of Natural Disasters and Socioeconomic Shocks

NATDIS SOCECON
Factor KMO Factor KMO
Variables loadings statistic Variables loadings statistic
Plagues 0.406 0.656 Lowered in- 0.456 0.619
come of any
member
Loss of harvest 0.406 0.652 Massive layoffs 0.422 0.601
Droughts 0.370 0.712 Loss of employ- 0.313 0.622
ment of any
member
Storms 0.354 0.712 Business 0.286 0.609
closing
Landslides 0.293 0.692 General 0.239 0.667
increase in
prices
Hurricanes 0.287 0.679 Bankruptcy 0.237 0.603
of family
business
Floods 0.214 0.643 Illness or acci- 0.183 0.655
dent of work-
ing member
Forest fires 0.209 0.695 Fall in prices of 0.163 0.536
products in
business
Earthquakes 0.154 0.617 Loss of cash 0.153 0.624
or in-kind
assistance
Criminal act 0.138 0.674
Land dispute 0.110 0.603
Abandonment 0.085 0.566
by the house-
hold head
Fire in the 0.049 0.537
house/
business/
property
Death of work- 0.044 0.576
ing member
consistent with existing evidence from developing country contexts (e.g.,

Beegle et al. 2006). Although the marginal effects of NATDIS are greater
than 0.02, the effects of SOCECON are less than 0.02. This suggests that
child labor is more responsive to natural disasters than to socioeconomic
shocks.
P5331.indb 178 10/15/10 1:53:56 PM

P5331.indb 179
Table 6 Marginal Effects on Child Labor and Schooling
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6
Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working
NATDIS 0.017 0.023 −0.008 0.040 — — — — 0.018 0.020 −0.015 0.041

(0.007)** (0.007)*** (0.014) (0.014)*** (0.007)** (0.007)*** (0.014) (0.014)***
NATDIS × — — 0.002 −0.035 — — — — — — 0.009 −0.036
EXTPOOR (0.020) (0.019)* (0.020) (0.019)*
NATDIS × — — 0.046 −0.017 — — — — — — 0.058 −0.025
POOR (0.017)*** (0.016) (0.017)*** (0.017)
SOCECON — — — — −0.000 0.019 0.024 −0.000 −0.005 0.014 0.027 −0.007
(0.008) (0.008)** (0.012)** (0.011) (0.008) (0.008)* (0.012)** (0.012)
SOCECON × — — — — — — −0.017 0.009 — — −0.021 0.012
EXTPOOR (0.027) (0.025) (0.027) (0.025)
SOCECON × — — — — — — −0.045 0.042 — — −0.059 0.043
POOR (0.016)*** (0.016)*** (0.016)*** (0.016)***
AGE 0.251 0.085 0.251 0.084 0.251 0.085 0.251 0.085 0.251 0.084 0.250 0.084
(0.015)*** (0.017)*** (0.015)*** (0.017)*** (0.015)*** (0.017)*** (0.015)*** (0.017)*** (0.015)*** (0.017)*** (0.015)*** (0.017)***
AGESQ −0.012 −0.001 −0.012 −0.001 −0.012 −0.001 −0.012 −0.001 −0.012 −0.001 −0.012 −0.001
(0.001)*** (0.001)* (0.001)*** (0.001) (0.001)*** (0.001)* (0.001)*** (0.001)* (0.001)*** (0.001)* (0.001)*** (0.001)*
MALE 0.060 0.182 0.060 0.182 0.059 0.182 0.059 0.182 0.060 0.182 0.060 0.182
(0.009)*** (0.010)*** (0.009)*** (0.010)*** (0.009)*** (0.010)*** (0.009)*** (0.010)*** (0.009)*** (0.010)*** (0.009)*** (0.010)***
INDIGENOUS −0.038 0.098 −0.038 0.098 −0.037 0.102 −0.037 0.102 −0.039 0.099 −0.039 0.099
(0.011)*** (0.012)*** (0.011)*** (0.012)*** (0.011)*** (0.012)*** (0.011)*** (0.012)*** (0.011)*** (0.012)*** (0.011)*** (0.012)***
MOEDUC 0.185 −0.091 0.184 −0.090 0.0185 −0.092 0.185 −0.093 0.185 −0.091 0.184 −0.090
(0.015)*** (0.020)*** (0.015)*** (0.020)*** (0.015)*** (0.196)*** (0.014)*** (0.019)*** (0.014)*** (0.020)*** (0.014)*** (0.020)***
FAEDUC 0.172 −0.042 0.171 −0.042 0.172 −0.042 0.171 −0.041 0.172 −0.042 0.170 −0.040
(0.013)*** (0.019)** (0.013)*** (0.019)** (0.013)*** (0.019)** (0.013)*** (0.019)** (0.013)*** (0.019)** (0.013)*** (0.019)**
REMITT 0.012 0.002 0.012 0.002 0.013 0.002 0.013 0.002 0.013 0.002 0.012 0.002
(0.003)*** (0.003) (0.003)*** (0.003) (0.003)*** (0.003) (0.003)*** (0.003) (0.003)*** (0.003) (0.003)*** (0.003)
HEADMALE 0.039 0.019 0.043 0.021 0.041 0.021 0.040 0.022 0.038 0.019 0.042 0.021
(0.052) (0.048) (0.052) (0.048) (0.052) (0.047) (0.052) (0.047) (0.052) (0.048) (0.053) (0.048)
HHSIZE −0.008 0.005 −0.008 0.005 −0.008 0.005 −0.007 0.005 −0.008 0.005 −0.008 0.005
(0.002)*** (0.002)** (0.002)*** (0.002)** (0.002)*** (0.002)** (0.002)*** (0.002)** (0.002)*** (0.002)** (0.002)*** (0.002)**
(continued)
10/15/10 1:53:57 PM
P5331.indb 180
Table 6 (continued)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4 Model 5 Model 6
Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working Schooling Working
RURAL −0.103 0.081 −0.103 0.080 −0.099 0.088 −0.099 0.088 −0.103 0.083 −0.103 0.082
(0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.010)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.010)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)*** (0.011)***
NORTH −0.063 0.013 −0.060 0.011 −0.063 0.018 −0.061 0.016 −0.064 0.017 −0.057 0.012
(0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)** (0.026) (0.030)* (0.026)
NORTHEAST −0.028 0.003 −0.022 −0.000 −0.027 0.010 −0.026 0.009 −0.029 0.007 −0.021 0.001
(0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030) (0.031) (0.030)
SOUTHEAST −0.001 0.025 0.003 0.023 0.001 0.034 0.001 0.035 −0.003 0.029 0.002 0.027
(0.026) (0.027) (0.026) (0.027) (0.026) (0.028) (0.026) (0.028) (0.027) (0.027) (0.026) (0.027)
CENTRAL −0.020 0.087 −0.017 0.086 −0.019 0.086 −0.017 0.084 −0.019 0.086 −0.013 0.081
(0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)*** (0.026) (0.028)***
SOUTHWEST −0.008 0.013 −0.005 0.010 −0.007 0.019 −0.007 0.019 −0.009 0.016 −0.005 0.013
(0.026) (0.025) (0.026) (0.025) (0.025) (0.025) (0.026) (0.025) (0.026) (0.025) (0.026) (0.025)
NORTHWEST −0.064 −0.015 −0.060 −0.017 −0.064 −0.008 −0.063 −0.009 −0.066 −0.011 −0.060 −0.014
(0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024) (0.028)** (0.024)
PETEN −0.054 0.036 −0.052 0.033 −0.049 0.046 −0.049 0.047 −0.056 0.039 −0.052 0.037
(0.031)* (0.029) (0.030)* (0.029) (0.030) (0.030) (0.030) (0.030) (0.031)* (0.029) (0.031)* (0.029)
ρ −0.2696 −0.2702 −0.2660 −0.2652 −0.2695 −0.2690
(0.0235)*** (0.0235)*** (0.0235)*** (0.235)*** (0.0234)*** (0.0235)***
Observations 7332 7332 7332 7332 7332 7332
Log Pseudo- −6634.48 −6627.02 −6641.81 −6635.00 −6632.74 −6616.48
Likelihood
Akaike 13,346.95 13,340.04 13,361.62 13,356.00 13,347.49 13,330.96
Information
Criterion
Prob. > χ2 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000 0.0000
*p < .10; **p < .05; ***p < .01
10/15/10 1:53:58 PM
We found no evidence to support H2. Socioeconomic shocks seem to

have no effect on child schooling, as indicated by insignificant coefficients
of SOCECON for the schooling equation in Models 3 and 5. In contrast
to H2, the marginal effect of NATDIS on child schooling is positive and
significant in Models 1 and 2. This suggests that child schooling increases
with natural disasters, which contradicts the hypothesis that households
transfer resources from schooling to survival expenditures, which usu-
ally increase with household shocks by not enrolling children in school.
However, this result is consistent with the evidence Duryea and Arends-
Kuenning (2003) presented, which suggests that schooling can increase
under bad macroeconomic conditions because child labor is less attrac-
tive as a result of falls in wages for unskilled labor. Both child labor and
schooling may increase if natural disasters affect domestic production
and, in turn, increase the time available for these child activities.
In support of H3, estimated coefficients on SOCECON × POOR in
Models 4 and 6 indicate that poor households are more likely to use child
labor as a strategy to cope with socioeconomic shocks than are nonpoor
households. The coefficients also indicate that poor households reduce
child schooling to cope with socioeconomic shocks, which is consistent
with the evidence Jacoby and Skoufias (1997) presented. In contrast, es-
timated coefficients on NATDIS × POOR in Models 2 and 6 suggest that
natural disasters increase child schooling in poor households but not in
extremely poor and nonpoor households, which contradicts H3. Also, we
found no evidence to support the hypothesis that extremely poor house-
holds respond differently to socioeconomic shocks in terms of child labor
and schooling compared with nonpoor households. Compared with non-
poor households, extremely poor households are also less likely to use
child labor for coping with natural disasters, as indicated by estimated
coefficients of NATDIS × EXTPOOR in Models 2 and 4. Extremely poor
households may have limited access to labor markets; consequently, child
labor would not be a potential strategy to cope with natural disasters or
socioeconomic shocks.
In addition, results suggest that child characteristics affect child labor
and schooling (see table 6). The probability of child labor and schooling
increases with age at a decreasing rate. This suggests a lower probabil-
ity of enrolling in middle school, at least in normative age. In addition,
the probability of child labor and schooling is greater for boys than for
girls. That is, households may treat boys and girls differently in terms of
child labor and schooling (Binder 1998; Emerson and Portela Souza 2007).
Boys are more likely to attend school than girls. However, boys are also
more likely to be sent to the labor market. Ethnicity also seems to affect
child labor and schooling. Indigenous children are more likely to work
than nonindigenous children and less likely to study. McEwan and Trow-
P5331.indb 181 10/15/10 1:53:59 PM

bridge (2007) also have presented evidence on the schooling differentials

between indigenous and nonindigenous children in Guatemala.
Parents with at least primary education increase the probability of child
schooling. In contrast, the probability of child labor decreases with the
education of both mothers and fathers. These effects are more significant
for mothers than for fathers, in support of the hypothesis that mothers
have a stronger preference for child welfare (Ridao-Cano 2001). Educated
parents usually earn higher wages, which may be enough to pay for sur-
vival expenditures. In that case, child labor is not needed to ensure house-
hold survival and children may be enrolled in school. Consistent with
previous findings (e.g., Patrinos and Psacharopoulos 1997), household size
(HHSIZE) negatively affects the probability of schooling and increases the
probability of child labor. In contrast, remittances increase the probability
of schooling. However, remittances do not affect the probability of child
labor. This indicates that remittances do not completely eliminate child
labor, although the number of working hours could be reduced. This is
consistent with our theoretical framework, which predicts that more adult
income reduces the number of hours allocated to child labor and increases
the time allocated to schooling.
Table 6 also shows that children in rural areas are less likely to be en-
rolled in school compared with children in urban areas. As table 3 shows,
households in rural areas point to income poverty, paid work, and lack of
interest as primary reasons for not sending children to school. Children
in rural areas are also more likely to work, as the positive and significant
coefficients of RURAL indicate in the working equations. Compared with
the metropolitan area, children are more likely to work in the Central re-
gion, where labor markets are more developed. In addition, the probabil-
ity of schooling is lower in the North, Northwest, and Petén, which are
regions with a significant indigenous population.
Finally, it is worth noting that the correlation (ρ) between schooling and
working is negative and significant across all models, greater than 0.26 in
absolute terms (see table 6). This is consistent with the theoretical frame-
work of this study and existing evidence (e.g., Binder and Scrogin 1999)
that suggests a trade-off between child labor and schooling.
CONCLUSION AND POLICY RECOMMENDATION
This article investigates whether Guatemalan households use child

labor and reduce child schooling to cope with natural disasters and so-
cioeconomic shocks. Findings indicate that households tend to use child
labor to cope with natural disasters and socioeconomic shocks. In con-
trast, we found no evidence that households reduce child schooling to
cope with such shocks. Moreover, findings suggest that child schooling
P5331.indb 182 10/15/10 1:53:59 PM

increases with natural disasters. Both child labor and schooling may be
expected to increase with natural disasters if domestic production is af-
fected and if the time available for working and schooling consequently
increases.
Results also indicate that poor households (but not extremely poor
households) are more likely to use child labor and schooling reduction
as strategies to cope with socioeconomic shocks. As a response to such
shocks, poor households may have to send children to labor markets.
They may use child earnings to pay for survival expenditures, especially
when adult income decreases as a result of socioeconomic shocks (Beegle
et al. 2006). In addition, households may reallocate resources to survival
expenditures by not enrolling children in school. In contrast, we found no
evidence that poor and extremely poor households are more likely to use
child labor to cope with natural disasters than are nonpoor households. In
contrast, findings indicate that extremely poor households are less likely
to use this strategy than are nonpoor households. Natural disaster may
further restrict access to labor markets for extremely poor households,
which would prevent them from using child labor to cope with natural
disasters and socioeconomic shocks.
Child labor and schooling reduction may increase the amount of re-
sources aimed at mitigating the negative effects of socioeconomic shocks
(Jacoby and Skoufias 1997). However, such coping strategies may have a
negative impact on the current and future welfare of children. The current
welfare of children may be put at risk because of unsafe working envi-
ronments. The reduction in the amount and quality of schooling—given
that more schooling is associated with poverty alleviation, disease reduc-
tion, and fertility choices—also jeopardizes the future welfare of children
(Glewwe 2002; World Bank 2005).
Public policies aimed to prevent and mitigate socioeconomic shocks
may improve the welfare of children. For example, coping assistance
programs could be implemented to provide households with access to
credit, insurance, and assets to cope with socioeconomic shocks (Beegle
et al. 2006; Guarcello et al. 2003). Mitigation policies could be attached
to schooling; thus, households would send their children to school to
improve the future welfare of children and to be eligible for coping as-
sistance. Implementing coping assistance programs may be a challenge
in developing countries. Guatemala may face this challenge using offi-
cial institutions such as the Secretariat of Food Security, the Presidential
Planning Secretariat, and the Ministry of Agriculture, which have already
implemented poverty alleviation and food security programs. Child labor
and schooling reduction would not be used as coping strategies if similar
programs are implemented to assist households recovering from negative
shocks.
P5331.indb 183 10/15/10 1:53:59 PM

APPENDIX A.
QUESTIONS USED TO ESTIMATE THE LATENT FACTORS NATDIS AND SOCIOECON
• En los últimos 12 meses ¿el hogar se ha visto afectado por alguno de los
siguiente problemas de tipo general?
1. Terremoto
2. Sequía
3. Inundación
4. Tormentas
5. Huracán
6. Plagas
7. Deslizamiento de tierras
8. Incendios forestales
9. Cierre de empresas
10. Despidos masivos
11. Aumento general de precios
12. Protestas públicas
13. Otro, ¿cuál?
• En los últimos 12 meses, ¿este hogar se vio afectado por alguno o algunos
de los siguiente problemas?
1. Pérdida del empleo de algún miembro
2. Baja de ingresos de algún miembro del hogar
3. Quiebra del negocio familiar
4. Enfermedad o accidente grave de algún trabajador miembro del
hogar
5. Muerte de un trabajador miembro del hogar
6. Muerte de otro miembro del hogar
7. Abandono del jefe de hogar
8. Incendio de la vivienda/negocio/propiedad
9. Hecho delictivo
10. Disputa de tierras
11. Disputas familiares
12. Pérdida de ayudas en dinero o especie
13. Caída de los precios de los productos del negocio del hogar
14. Pérdida de la cosecha
15. Otros, ¿cuáles?
P5331.indb 184 10/15/10 1:53:59 PM

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P5331.indb 186 10/15/10 1:53:59 PM

INSTIT UCIONES POLÍTICAS Y POLÍTICAS
P Ú B L I C A S E N L A F E D E R AC I Ó N B R A S I L E Ñ A
Fabiano Santos
Graduate Institute of Research of Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ)
Cristiane Batista
Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO)
Resumen: El objetivo del trabajo es analizar los determinantes de las políticas pú-
blicas de naturaleza social en los estados brasileños. Más específicamente, se trata
de examinar el gasto público en las áreas de salud y educación y explorar las posi-
bles causas de la variación eventualmente observada. La motivación teórica de esta
propuesta adviene de una línea de investigación en la literatura que afirma que a
nivel estatal el ejecutivo es una fuerza sin contraposición dentro del sistema polí-
tico y que, además, la lógica de producción de políticas públicas estaría, sobre todo,
vinculada a los objetivos individuales del gobernador. Entretanto, según nuestros
resultados fueron descartadas las hipótesis nulas de la inexistencia de un efecto
positivo de la ideología del gobernador sobre el nivel del gasto social y de la ausencia
de impacto negativo del número de comisiones, aún en gobiernos controlados por la
izquierda, en este mismo nivel de gasto.
INTRODUCCIÓN
La combinación de un sistema presidencialista de gobierno con una

organización federal del estado nacional no es muy común entre las de-
mocracias contemporáneas. En Brasil, además, esta combinación es acom-
pañada de una variedad significativa en lo que concierne a los sistemas
partidarios de cada estado y región. Tenemos, entonces, en nuestro país,
no sólo la reproducción del presidencialismo a nivel estatal, lo que pre-
senta de inmediato el problema de las relaciones entre el ejecutivo y el
legislativo, en este nivel de gobierno, sino también una diversidad de ex-
periencias en cuanto a la evolución del sistema partidario. Los principales
efectos de la conjugación de estos trazos de nuestra democracia son la con-
figuración de un cuadro institucional de gran complejidad y un enorme
desafío para los analistas.
El objetivo del trabajo es analizar una de las facetas de esta comple-
jidad: los determinantes de las políticas públicas de naturaleza social
This article was originally prepared for delivery at the 2007 Congress of the Latin American
Studies Association, Montreal, Canada, September 5–8, 2007.
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en los estados brasileños. Más específicamente, se trata de examinar el

gasto público en las áreas de salud y educación y explorar las posibles
causas de la variación eventualmente observada. La primera motivación
teórica de nuestro análisis adviene de la oportunidad de testar los funda-
mentos de la argumentación neoinstitucionalista clásica de modo com-
parativo y en contextos subnacionales. Entendemos como argumentación
clásica neoinstitucionalista aquella que entiende los fenómenos políticos,
en nuestro caso las decisiones de gasto público en el área social, como el
resultado de las preferencias y de las instituciones. Se entiende como pre-
ferencias al posicionamiento de los actores en un espacio continuo, unidi-
mensional. En una de las extremidades, a la izquierda, se encuentran los
actores que prefieren gastar más y, en la otra extremidad, a la derecha, se
encuentran los actores que prefieren gastar menos en el área social. Las
instituciones son entendidas, a su vez, como las reglas que organizan el
proceso decisorio y distribuyen derechos y recursos a los participantes de
este proceso.
Una segunda motivación teórica se focaliza en el caso brasileño, sobre
todo, en la discusión alrededor de la naturaleza de la política estatal en
Brasil. Importante línea de investigación en la literatura que afirma que a
nivel estatal el ejecutivo es una fuerza sin contraposición dentro del sis-
tema político y que, además, la lógica de producción de políticas públicas
estaría vinculada, principalmente, a los objetivos individuales del gober-
nador, lo que significa, ciertamente, mantener el control sobre la maquina
política del estado.
Nuestro argumento, que parte de la tradición neoinstitucionalista, ca-
mina en otra dirección, esto es la demostración de la importancia de los
factores ligados a las inclinaciones ideológicas del jefe del ejecutivo estatal,
así como los factores institucionales vinculados a la capacidad decisoria
del legislativo en este nivel de gobierno como parámetros fundamentales
para el entendimiento del proceso decisorio en la federación brasileña.
Este artículo se organiza de la siguiente forma: en la próxima sección,
comentamos algunos trabajos que analizaron, de manera abarcadora, el
proceso político en el contexto subnacional. Presentamos la hipótesis de
ultrapresidencialismo estatal de Fernando Abrucio y anticipamos algu-
nas dudas sobre la validez del argumento subyacente a la hipótesis; en la
tercera sección, exponemos brevemente nuestro argumento sobre la diná-
mica política estatal en Brasil, destacando los factores ideológicos e insti-
tucionales, más específicamente, ligados a la complejidad organizacional
de los poderes legislativos en este nivel de gobierno; en la cuarta sección,
promovemos el análisis de las hipótesis derivadas de nuestro argumento,
aplicadas a las decisiones de gasto en las áreas de educación y salud en el
período 1991–1997.
La elección de dicho período se da por dos motivos: (1) la posibilidad
de promover un estudio más sólido acerca del ultrapresidencialismo es-
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INSTITUCIONES POLÍTICAS Y POLÍTICAS EN LA FEDERACIÓN BRASILEÑA 189
tatal, ya que fue éste el período sobre el cual la investigación de Abrucio

incide. A partir de 1997, las reformas implantadas por el gobierno del pre-
sidente Fernando Henrique Cardoso, sobre todo la aprobación de la Ley
de Responsabilidad Fiscal, restringieron mucho la flexibilidad de la que
disfrutaban los gobiernos subnacionales respecto a la manipulación de la
recaudación y del gasto;1 y (2) este periodo puede ser considerado como el
auge de las reformas neoliberales en América Latina, reformas que tenían
como sustrato ideológico la idea de que no habría ya diferencias sustanti-
vas entre gobiernos de inclinación ideológica de izquierda frente a gobier-
nos con perfil conservador o de derecha. No obstante, hemos verificado
proposiciones empíricas alternativas y constatamos la fuerza de nuestras
variables centrales; finalmente, en la quinta sección concluimos con las
observaciones sobre los resultados y las posibilidades de investigación
para un futuro inmediato.
LA POLÍTICA EN LOS ESTADOS BRASILEÑOS A PARTIR DE LA CONSTITUCIÓN DE 1988

La variedad que caracteriza nuestra experiencia política, principal-
mente en función del sistema federal y de la enorme diversidad regional
que marca la vida social del país, es exactamente el motivo inicial para el
estudio de las instituciones políticas estatales en Brasil. Un buen ejemplo
de los trabajos realizados en esta línea fue compilado en el libro, O sis-
tema eleitoral brasileiro: Diversidade e tendências, por Olavo Brasil de Lima Jr.
(1997). El objetivo de la publicación consistió en resaltar (mediante el aná-
lisis de diversos indicadores) las diferencias significativas existentes en
cuanto al ritmo y al grado de multipartidismo implantado en los diversos
estados y, a su vez, en un mismo estado a lo largo del tiempo.
La preocupación de Olavo Brasil de estudiar la variedad institucional
brasileña encontró oportuna compañía en el proyecto, coordinado por Ré-
gis de Castro Andrade, de analizar los cambios en el proceso de gobierno
sufridos por distintos estados y municipios del país. El mismo rindió sus
frutos, entre los cuales vale mencionar la obra Processo de governo no muni-
cípio e no estado, organizado por el proprio Régis Andrade (1998), y el im-
prescindible libro de Fernando Luiz Abrucio (1998), Os barões da federação:
Os governadores e a redemocratização brasileira. Es lícito afirmar que estos
trabajos son la contrapartida a los estudios legislativos y de las relaciones
ejecutivo-legislativo de la obra de Olavo Brasil, dirigida hacia el sistema
partidario brasileño.
1. La Ley Complementaria N° 101, del 4 de mayo de 2000, llamada Ley de Responsabili-

dad Fiscal, estableció normas de finanzas públicas para promover la responsabilidad de la
gestión fiscal, mediante acciones en que se prevenían riesgos y corregían desviaciones ca-
paces de afectar el equilibrio de las cuentas públicas, destacándose la planeación, el control,
la transparencia y la responsabilización como premisas básicas.
P5331.indb 189 10/15/10 1:54:00 PM

El libro de Fernando Abrucio, Os barões da federação, merece un comen-

tario aparte. El principal argumento de Abrucio es que, en general, las
Asambleas Legislativas estatales en Brasil son instituciones frágiles y do-
minadas por un actor dominante, el poder ejecutivo, en la figura del go-
bernador del estado. La imagen utilizada por Abrucio es la noción de que
estaría ocurriendo en los estados el llamado ultrapresidencialismo estatal.
Básicamente, el ultrapresidencialismo estatal (en adelante, UE) se caracte-
riza por el hecho de que, en Brasil, los gobernadores estatales son el centro
indiscutido del proceso de gobierno, instrumento de control ejercido por
ellos sobre los otros poderes y sobre toda la dinámica política en el ámbito
subnacional. Existiría una especie de pacto homologatorio entre goberna-
dores y diputados estatales por el cual los legisladores aprueban sin ma-
yores discusiones las iniciativas del ejecutivo a cambio de la distribución
de recursos clientelares y por la ausencia de participación y responsabili-
dad de los parlamentares con respecto a las políticas públicas adoptadas
por el ejecutivo. Resulta trascendente subrayar que la caracterización del
UE como fenómeno histórico, es decir su vigencia, fue verificada detalla-
damente en el período 1991–1994. Más adelante en el texto, aclararemos la
relevancia de esta observación.
Más recientemente, Santos (2001), organiza un volumen sobre las
Asambleas Legislativas en Brasil, brindando estudios sobre seis estados:
Ceará, Espírito Santo, Minas Gerais, Rio Grande do Sul, Rio de Janeiro y
São Paulo. Una breve exploración de variables simples (como origen y na-
turaleza de la producción legislativa, distribución de las bancas entre los
partidos, tamaño y número de comisiones permanentes de las asambleas)
comprueba la relevancia analítica del estudio comparativo entre los pode-
res legislativos estatales. En consecuencia, existe una variedad significa-
tiva de experiencias políticas a nivel estatal en lo que atañe a las relaciones
entre el poder ejecutivo y legislativo, así como a la organización interna
de los órganos representativos, lo que nos lleva a suponer que la misma
variación debe ser encontrada en lo que respecta al proceso decisorio en
torno de las políticas públicas.
A los fines de entender la lógica en la supuesta variación en el proceso
decisorio de los estados brasileños, partimos de la teoría subyacente de
la hipótesis del UE, antes expuesta, a partir de la cual se genera una ex-
pectativa de que tal variación se refleja, por ejemplo, en la cantidad de
políticas públicas realizadas, cuestión esencialmente longitudinal, esto es
a lo largo del tiempo, y no espacialmente, o sea de estado en estado. Tal
derivación se justifica en base a las premisas que sustentan el argumento.
Si no, veamos.
El UE se basa en la idea según la cual el jefe del ejecutivo en el ámbito
subnacional gobierna al límite de la ausencia de controles democráticos.
Las instituciones del estado no estarían preparadas para ofrecer cualquier
resistencia a las iniciativas de policy impulsadas por el gobierno y, además,
P5331.indb 190 10/15/10 1:54:00 PM

los actores políticos se hallan desprovistos de incentivos para oponerse

a su poder, durante el proceso decisorio, dado que el ejecutivo controla
los recursos necesarios para la obtención de sus objetivos programáticos.2
Por consiguiente, las políticas públicas perseguidas y eventualmente con-
cretadas en cada estado serían aquellas que responden a las preferencias
únicas y exclusivamente del gobernador. Entonces, la pregunta central es:
¿cuáles serían los objetivos de policy de este actor político especifico? Tal
como es formulada la hipótesis del UE en Abrucio (1998), la finalidad pri-
mordial del jefe del ejecutivo en los estados brasileños es la de montar,
ampliar y mantener la maquinaria política estatal que le permita ser el
personaje político central de su jurisdicción.
En enunciaciones alternativas (Abrucio y Samuels 1997; Samuels 2003;
Samuels y Mainwaring 2004) la hipótesis del UE sostiene que el poder de
lo gobernadores es tal que justamente desvirtúa el funcionamiento del fe-
deralismo en Brasil.3 Esto sería una parte de los efectos del control ejercido
por los jefes del ejecutivo estatal sobre los demás actores políticos en sus
respectivas unidades federales, inclusive la bancada de diputados nacio-
nales electos en dicho estado. Los gobernadores, según el argumento, se
aprovecharían de tal control, vetando iniciativas de reformas moderniza-
doras enviadas por el gobierno nacional al legislativo en ámbito nacional,
a no ser que a cambio el gobierno este dispuesto a conceder privilegios
fiscales y políticas distributivas en beneficio del estado.
Nuestro cuestionamiento en relación al argumento subyacente a la hi-
pótesis reside en la premisa de comportamiento: ¿sería posible pensar en
otros ejes de acción política que no sean los de maximizar las oportuni-
dades de mantener el control de la maquinaria política estatal? Nuestra
apuesta en el siguiente trabajo es que no sólo es razonable pensar en una
respuesta positiva para la pregunta antes formulada, sino que también la
subestimación de los propósitos vinculados a la orientación ideológica de
2. Es verdad que consta en el libro de Abrucio que la mayor competitividad política y

el mayor peso político de partidos como el PT y el PDT en las asambleas podría servir de
contrapunto al poder del gobernador en determinados estados. Desde nuestro punto de
vista, dos puntos merecen ser destacados en ese tema y nos encaminan hacia una línea
de argumentación distinta: (1) la mayor competitividad política sería función del mayor o
menor desarrollo socioeconómico de un estado, lo que nos llevaría a una argumentación
de cuño sociológico. Con todo, nuestra intención en este artículo es confirmar el punto
neoinstitucionalista básico según el cual los fenómenos políticos pueden ser entendidos,
en cualquier punto del tiempo y del espacio, como resultado de las preferencias y de las
instituciones; (2) durante el período examinado por Abrúcio, el PT y el PDT, con excepción
de lo que ocurría en pocos estados, tenían una presencia muy reducida en los legislativos
estatales, o sea, esa afirmación en aquel momento no fue mucho más allá de una suposición,
auque fuera intuitiva y razonable.
3. Para un examen crítico del impacto de los gobernadores en la política nacional así
como de la supuesta tergiversación de la democracia producto de la práctica del federa-
lismo en Brasil, ver Soares (2007).
P5331.indb 191 10/15/10 1:54:00 PM

los actores políticos y a la naturaleza de las instituciones legislativas en

el ámbito estatal conduce a imprecisiones teóricas y errores empíricos de
gravedad.
IDEOLOGÍA, INSTITUCIONES LEGISLATIVAS Y GASTO SOCIAL EN LOS

ESTADOS BRASILEÑOS
La línea teórica que nortea el desarrollo de nuestras proposiciones

empíricas es la del neoinstitucionalismo, entendido en su acepción más
básica, a saber, que los fenómenos políticos, tales como decisiones guber-
namentales de gasto, pueden ser entendidos como resultado de la conju-
gación de preferencias con instituciones. Dos desdoblamientos específicos
de esta tradición teórica son de especial interés en el contexto de nuestro
experimento.
En primer lugar, del lado de las preferencias, las teorías según las cua-
les los gobiernos de izquierda persiguen un perfil más universalista y re-
distributivo para sus políticas, mientras que los gobiernos de derecha se
preocupan más por la estabilidad económica mediante la reducción de
la inflación, aún en una coyuntura propia de globalización (Boix 1997;
Garrett 1998). Como corolario de esta concepción de comportamiento po-
lítico, asumimos que los gobernadores de los estados brasileños poseen
prioridades políticas diferentes a las de los otros actores políticos en su
estado y se esfuerzan por hacer valer tales prioridades. Aquellos goberna-
dores que están a la izquierda del espectro ideológico tenderían a privile-
giar políticas sociales, mientras que aquellos a la derecha tendrían otras
preocupaciones básicas. La primera proposición empírica que nos gusta-
ría examinar y que se confronta con la intuición generalizada que circula
en torno a UE es: en cuanto más a la izquierda del espectro ideológico se
encuentra el gobernador del estado, mayor será el nivel de gasto social en
dicho estado.4
El segundo desdoblamiento teórico surge del neoinstitucionalismo
aplicado al legislativo. Según esta corriente, el perfil de organización del
4. Una posible versión del argumento subyacente a la tesis del UE sería la de que, en
realidad, esta reivindicaría únicamente que el gobernador, sea cual fuere su inclinación
ideológica, lograría la aprobación sin contraste de sus políticas en el ámbito estatal. Así, en
esencia, no habría contraposición de la tesis UE con nuestra primera hipótesis de trabajo.
Sin embargo, desde nuestro punto de vista, esa versión de la tesis extendería el argumento
hasta el punto de peder su validez original. En varios momentos de su texto, Abrucio es
explícito al afirmar que el control de las instituciones políticas en el ámbito estatal no ocurre
para que el gobernador haga prevalecer sus preferencias en términos de policy (lo que, por
cierto, no es problemático según varias teorías sobre el buen funcionamiento de un sistema
democrático), sino para que sea posible mantener la maquinaria política bajo su control, o
sea, para que el gobernador personalmente pueda perpetuarse en el poder en este ámbito
de gobierno.
P5331.indb 192 10/15/10 1:54:00 PM

legislativo produce un efecto sistemático sobre el proceso decisorio. La

información ya consolidada sobre el desempeño de órganos representati-
vos nos indica que la complejidad interna, fruto de la división del trabajo
y de las actividades de deliberación y análisis, es una variable esencial.5
Cuando el sistema de comisiones está bien desarrollado, el legislativo po-
see mejores condiciones para oponerse al ejecutivo, así como también para
proponer agendas alternativas a aquella que es enviada por el gobierno.
El contraste posible entre esta línea teórica y la teoría en la cual se basa
la hipótesis del UE merece especial atención—según esta última, todo el
proceso decisorio a nivel estatal está condicionado por los objetivos po-
líticos del gobernador, mientras que el neoinstitucionalismo aplicado al
legislativo sugiere que las características organizacionales, intrínsecas al
órgano representativo producen efectos sistemáticos sobre los resultados
políticos. La segunda proposición empírica a ser explorada (y que defende-
mos) igualmente se contrapone al UE; puede ser formulada de la siguiente
manera: los gobiernos de izquierda que se relacionan con Asambleas Le-
gislativas de alta complejidad (número alto de comisiones permanentes)
enfrentan mayores dificultades para hacer valer su agenda de políticas
públicas (vale decir, aumentar el gasto social) que los gobiernos que se
relacionan con asambleas de menor complejidad.6
El contraste con la hipótesis UE se efectuará mediante la exploración
de la variable año electoral. La racionalidad para utilizar este paráme-
5. El trabajo clásico es de Krehbiel (1990). Una aplicación comparativa en el contexto eu-

ropeo fue desarrollada por Strom (1998). En este trabajo, el número de comisiones es uno
de los indicadores fundamentales de la complejidad interna y capacitación institucional.
Otros indicadores que pueden ser citados son la naturaleza de las comisiones, si son per-
manentes o ad hoc, y el timing de evaluación de los asuntos, si se hace antes o después de
la decisión tomada por el pleno. En el contexto de los estados brasileños, no hay variación
en cuanto a los dos últimos criterios, pues en todos los estados las comisiones que analizan
políticas públicas son de naturaleza permanente y este análisis es anterior a la decisión de
su mérito en el pleno. El único indicador que varía entonces es el número de comisiones
permanentes por estado. De todas formas, lo que valdría tomar en cuenta es la rationale del
argumento informacional de Krehbiel, a saber, que en la medida en que el legislativo, en su
estructura interna, tenga mayor capacidad de reproducir la división del trabajo existente en
el ejecutivo, división normalmente expresada en el control de cargos ministeriales, mayor
será su poder de contraposición a las preferencias del gobierno, en las ocasiones en que el
sesgo de éste se acentuara vis-à-vis el posicionamiento del legislador mediano en un espacio
unidimensional.
6. Es importante subrayar que el numero de comisiones permanentes en los legislativos
estaduales no varía de acuerdo al nivel de desarrollo económico del estado. Como mues-
tra el cuadro 3, con excepción de RJ y SP, los demás estados más desarrollados tienen un
número de comisiones equivalente al de los estados menos poblados y desarrollados. Eso
quiere decir que, analíticamente, se puede considerar la variable “complejidad” no como
una variable socio-estructural, endógena, sino más bien como una variable independiente
que surge de elecciones pasadas, sin la interferencia de posibles temáticas de políticas
futuras.
P5331.indb 193 10/15/10 1:54:01 PM

tro como prueba de rigor del UE es de fácil entendimiento—según la

hipótesis, el objetivo fundamental del gobernador (actor político incon-
trastable en la jurisdicción del estado) es el de mantener el control sobre
la maquina política estatal. En la literatura abocada a los efectos de la na-
turaleza y del timing de las decisiones (producto de la competencia por el
voto en contextos democráticos) son bastante conocidas dos versiones de
la teoría de los ciclos económico-electorales. En la primera versión, que
podría ser llamada teoría oportunista, como estrategia de maximización
de las probabilidades de victoria electoral, el gobierno aumenta el gasto
de manera de responder a clientelas e impulsar la actividad económica en
periodos electorales. En la segunda versión, el gobierno procura respon-
der, independientemente del período en que se encuentra su administra-
ción, a los reclamos de su core constituency. Básicamente, existen dos gran-
des fuerzas políticas en sociedades industrializadas de economías mixtas:
aquellas que están ligadas al capital y que se organizan en torno de par-
tidos conservadores, de centro-derecha, y aquellas vinculadas al trabajo,
que se estructuran en torno de partidos de izquierda, socialdemócratas,
laboristas, etc. En términos de output de políticas, el primer conjunto de
fuerzas prefieren gobiernos menos intervencionistas, que tributen menos
y, por lo tanto, no amplíen demasiado el gasto social. El segundo, por su
vez, admite mayor participación del sector público en la economía, ma-
yor carga de impuestos y más acción gubernamental para la reducción
de las desigualdades resultantes del funcionamiento de una economía de
mercado.7
Nuestro objetivo no es el de discutir la validez y el alcance de la teoría
de los ciclos en cualquiera de sus versiones (cosa que ya está ampliamente
abordada en la literatura especializada) sino tan sólo emplearla como fun-
damento conceptual para el desarrollo de proposiciones empíricas com-
patibles con la hipótesis del UE. En este sentido es perfectamente razo-
nable afirmar que la teoría subyacente al UE y la teoría de los ciclos en
su primera versión exhiben iguales conceptos sobre el comportamiento
de los actores políticos, la diferencia reside en el escopo adoptado para la
investigación: en el caso de las teorías de los ciclos (del tipo oportunista)
se trata de un comportamiento extensible para cualquier contexto siempre
y cuando el poder sea disputado por vía electoral y el gobierno posea
instrumentos de intervención económica.8 En nuestro test de la tesis de la
7. La literatura es bastante extensa sobre ese punto. Citamos aquí los textos pioneros de
Alesina (1987); Hibbs (1977) y Tufte (1978).
8. Una interesante observación de uno de los dictaminadores anónimos que comentaron
nuestro trabajo nos lleva a la afirmación de que no estamos discutiendo la validez de las
teorías de los ciclos para contextos democráticos funcionales o disfuncionales. Las únicas
condiciones que deben estar presentes en el experimento hecho a continuación es la de que
el gobierno resulta de elecciones competitivas y la de que éste posee medios para beneficiar
P5331.indb 194 10/15/10 1:54:01 PM

UE una supuesta conducta oportunista se aplica específicamente al caso

de los estados brasileños a partir de la promulgación de la Constitución de
1988 hasta por lo menos los primeros acuerdos de renegociación de las
deudas estatales con el gobierno nacional, en la segunda mitad de la dé-
cada de los 90 del siglo pasado, momento a partir del cual, por una serie de
motivos, principalmente por la aprobación de la Ley de Responsabilidad
Fiscal, los gobiernos estatales sufrieron fuertes restricciones en su capaci-
dad de recaudar y gastar.
Además, una segunda diferencia de escopo de investigación consiste en
la naturaleza de los instrumentos utilizados por el gobierno. En el modelo
general de ciclos oportunistas la acción del gobierno no se restringe a la
política fiscal, ya que incluye también el manejo de la política monetaria y
política macroeconómica en sentido amplio. En el contexto del test que de-
sarrollaremos abajo, no es ocasión para intentar la búsqueda de ciclos de
política monetaria y macroeconómica en los estados por la simple razón
de que faltan los medios para tal tipo de acción en el ámbito subnacional
de la política brasileña. Podemos, entonces, formalizar la tercera propo-
sición empírica de interés, en contraposición a la cual nuestro argumento
busca formular una alternativa: el nivel del gasto social en un estado au-
menta en años electorales.
Antes de comenzar con los sondeos experimentales, son necesarias al-
gunas consideraciones sobre las instituciones políticas brasileñas, consi-
deraciones que impactan sobre la elaboración de las hipótesis empíricas,
en algunos casos exponiendo de forma más cuidadosa su rationale, y la
construcción del modelo a ser verificado, bien como en la operacionaliza-
ción de las variables. Básicamente, son dos las ponderaciones, la primera
en lo referente a la cuestión de los sistemas de gobierno y de partidos en el
ámbito estatal en Brasil, y la segunda, en torno a la cuestión de la estruc-
tura organizacional de las Asambleas Legislativas.
Reflexiones recurrentes en la literatura sobre el gasto público en con-
textos democráticos, por ejemplo, indican que los factores como número y
características de los partidos que apoyan al ejecutivo, así como la compo-
sición partidaria dominante en el legislativo, son fundamentales en cual-
quier modelo explicativo de aquel fenómeno (Alesina y Rosenthal 1995;
Alt y Lowry 1994). Una característica importante de nuestro argumento,
por ende, deriva del sistema de gobierno adoptado por todos los estados
brasileños. Siendo estos presidencialistas, es fundamental considerar el
modo por el cual el ejecutivo busca apoyo en el legislativo, a fin de aprobar
su agenda de políticas públicas. En otras palabras, es necesario agregar a
o imponer costos a grupos y sectores de la sociedad. Cualquier discusión al respecto de la

funcionalidad o disfuncionalidad de la democracia y su relción con la teoría de los ciclos
está fuera del alcance de nuestra preocupación.
P5331.indb 195 10/15/10 1:54:01 PM

la explicación la posibilidad de que existan los gobiernos divididos, esto

es, un ejecutivo apoyado por tendencias ideológicas distintas de aquellas
que son mayoritarias en el legislativo.9 Es natural imaginar que cuando
ejecutivo y legislativo son dominados por tendencias ideológicas en con-
flicto, la variación en las políticas públicas es menor que cuando existe
convergencia en la tendencia programática entre los partidos que apoyan
al gobierno y los que dominan el poder legislativo (Haggard y MacCub-
bins 2001; Tsbelis 1995).
En Brasil, la lógica de construcción de apoyo al ejecutivo de los partidos
con escaños en la asamblea es particularmente relevante. En gran parte de
los estados se verifica, a partir de 1986 (cuando tiene inicio la redemocrati-
zación, tras veinte años de régimen autoritario), un aumento significativo
del número efectivo de partidos en las Asambleas Legislativas (Nicolau
1996; cf. Lima 1997; Mainwaring 1999).10 El cuadro 1 detallado a continua-
ción muestra que en algunos estados—como por ejemplo, en el de Espírito
Santo—este número casi se triplicó.11 Esta variación también se verifica
en São Paulo, que pasó de 3.9 partidos, en 1986, a 7.3, en 1990. Aunque
desde 1990 hasta 1994 haya existido alguna variación en la dirección en
la que ocurre la fragmentación (para más o para menos), el hecho es que,
en general, los gobernadores de los estados se enfrentaron con asambleas
multipartidarias.
La alta fragmentación del sistema partidario brasileño exige la forma-
ción de coaliciones para garantizar la gobernabilidad. En el cuadro 2 se
presenta una alternativa de observación del fenómeno, cuyo análisis evi-
dencia que frecuentemente los partidos que consiguieron que su candi-
dato sea electo para el gobierno estatal entre 1987 y 1997 no alcanzaron,
sin alianzas, la mayoría en sus respectivas Asambleas Legislativas. De las
veintisiete unidades de la federación brasileña, en un período de 10 años,
apenas en diez ocasiones el partido del gobernador atingió más del 50 por
ciento de los escaños legislativos, la mayor parte de ellos en 1986, cuando
el índice de fragmentación partidaria era menor.12
9. Para ejemplo de esta línea de análisis ver Fiorina (1996).

10. Para la medición del Número de Partidos Efectivos fue empleado el índice propuesto
por Laakso y Taagepera (1979), siendo: N = 1/Σxi 2, donde N = número efectivo de partidos
legislativos; Σ = sumatoria y xi = la proporción de votos de cada partido.
11. Los cuadros 1 y 2 que se presentan a continuación están basados en información ex-
traída inmediatamente después de la publicación de los resultados electorales y no a partir
de la entrega de constancias de victoria a los candidatos por parte de la autoridad electoral.
Dado que en esa época no había regla que castigara a los políticos que, habiendo sido elec-
tos por un partido, decidieran pasarse a otro a lo largo de su mandato, es verdad que los
números presentados no corresponden exactamente a la real distribución de las bancadas
partidistas en las Asambleas al momento de la toma de posesión de los gobernadores.
12. Acre (1986), Bahia (1986), Ceará (1986), Goiás (1986), Minas Gerais (1986), Mato Grosso
(1986), Pará (1986), Paraná (1986), Rondônia (1986) y Paraíba (1994).
P5331.indb 196 10/15/10 1:54:01 PM

Cuadro 1 Número efectivo de partidos en las Asambleas Legislativas: 1986–1994

1986 1990 1994
Rondônia 2,4 5,7 9,4

Acre 1,8 4 4,3
Amazonas 3 5,9 6,3
Roraima — 6,4 5,6
Pará 2,4 6,1 5,8
Amapá — 6,3 5,6
Tocantins — 3,6 3,2
Maranhão 3,1 5,1 8,4
Piauí 2,5 3,6 3,4
Ceará 2,7 5,1 4,4
Rio Grande do Norte 2,8 3,8 3,4
Paraíba 2,7 4,4 2,9
Pernambuco 3,3 5,7 3,8
Alagoas 3,7 5,9 6,8
Sergipe 2,9 4,2 6
Bahia 2,4 4,9 6,6
Minas Gerais 2,9 7,8 8,8
Espírito Santo 2,8 7,4 8,8
Rio de Janeiro 6,5 7,1 8,7
São Paulo 3,9 7,3 7,2
Paraná 2 5,9 6,8
Santa Catarina 2,9 5,3 4,4
Rio Grande do Sul 3,2 5,2 6,1
Mato Grosso do Sul 2,6 5,4 6,9
Mato Grosso 2,4 3,5 6,1
Goiás 2,1 4,9 7
Distrito Federal — 9 5,2
Media 2,9 5,5 5,9
Desvío Estándar 0,9 1,4 1,8
Fuente: LEEX
De manera que, dadas las características de los sistemas partidarios

subnacionales (en general, plurales, diversificados y a veces, altamente
fragmentados) es natural concluir que la obtención de apoyo legislativo
para las propuestas políticas del gobernador haya ocurrido preponderan-
temente a través del armado de coaliciones. Para los efectos del análisis,
por consiguiente, lo ideal sería utilizar como indicador de la fuerza del
ejecutivo estatal en las Asambleas Legislativas, la composición partidaria
de las secretarías estatales, lo que indicaría una dimensión más precisa de
apoyo al gobierno, y no apenas el porcentaje de bancas atingido por el par-
tido del gobernador en las elecciones de jurisdicción estatal. O sea, sería
ideal construir un indicador que permita identificar claramente los parti-
dos que componen la coalición de apoyo del gobernador en el legislativo.
P5331.indb 197 10/15/10 1:54:01 PM

Cuadro 2 Porcentaje de Escaños del Partido del Gobernador en las Asambleas

Legislativas: 1986, 1990 y 1994
1986 1990 1994
% % %
Estades esc/gob Part. gob esc/gob Part. gob esc/gob Part. gob
Acre 58,3 PMDB 29,2 PDS 33,3 PPR

Alagoas 37 PMDB 14,8 PSC 22,2 PMDB
Amapá - 25 PFL 5,9 PSB
Amazonas 45,8 PMDB 16,7 PMDB 29,2 PPR
Bahia 54 PMDB 34,9 PFL 30,2 PFL
Ceará 52,2 PMDB 39,1 PSDB 43,5 PSDB
Distrito Federal - 16,7 PTR 29,2 PT
Espirito Santo 50 PMDB 10 PDT 13,3 PT
Goiás 65,9 PMDB 39 PMDB 26,8 PMDB
Maranhão 26,2 PMDB 35,7 PFL 23,8 PFL
Mato Grosso 54,2 PMDB 45,8 PFL 20,8 PDT
Minas Gerais 53,2 PMDB 7,8 PRS 10,4 PSDB
M. G. do Sul 50 PMDB 29,2 PTB 20,8 PMDB
Pará 61 PMDB 24,4 PMDB 4,9 PSDB
Paraíba 47,2 PMDB 22,2 PMDB 52,8 PMDB
Paraná 68,5 PMDB 29,6 PMDB 16,7 PDT
Pernambuco 38,8 PMDB 30,6 PFL 32,7 PSB
Piauí 26,7 PMDB 43,3 PFL 16,7 PMDB
Rio de Janeiro 25,7 PMDB 30 PDT 22,9 PSDB
Rio G. do Norte 41,7 PMDB 12,5 PDS 33,3 PMDB
R. G. do Sul 49,1 PMDB 23,6 PDT 18,2 PMDB
Rondônia 54,2 PMDB 4,2 PTR 16,7 PMDB
Roraima - 25 PTB 29,4 PTB
Santa Catarina 47,5 PMDB 17,5 PFL 25 PMDB
Sergipe 45,8 PFL 12,5 PMDB 4,2 PSDB
São Paulo 44 PMDB 22,6 PMDB 18,1 PSDB
Tocantins - 37,5 PMDB 37,5 PPR
Fuente: Dados Eleitorais do Brasil (1982–2002).
Nota: En el año 1986 no había elección para gobernador en Amapá, Distrito Federal y
Roraima. El estado del Tocantins fue creado en 1988.
Desafortunadamente, aún así, lejos estamos de alcanzar aquellos datos

que nos permitan entablar un estudio de tal naturaleza.13 De esta forma,
emprenderemos la verificación de la hipótesis referente al impacto de la
tendencia ideológica del gobernador sobre las prioridades de gasto en la
ausencia de una variable substancial que sirva de medida del grado de
13. El estudio de Pereira (2004) es una demostración de lo difícil que es colectar datos
para emprender un análisis sobre la distribución de secretarías por los partidos en el ám-
bito estatal. De los veintisiete estados, trece presentaron la seria completa de secretarios con
sus respectivos partidos.
P5331.indb 198 10/15/10 1:54:02 PM

apoyo al ejecutivo en el legislativo, o de proximidad entre las preferencias

sobre políticas de estos dos autores.
Una alternativa posible para dar cuenta del problema, surge mediante
el debate de la segunda ponderación que discursa respecto de la compleji-
dad para el estudio de las características organizacionales de los legislati-
vos estatales. En la literatura especializada, varios aspectos estructurales
de las comisiones permanentes son tenidos en cuenta para determinar
el grado de autonomía y poder de estos órganos en el proceso decisorio
interno del legislativo. En el caso de los estados brasileños, sin embargo,
la variación que concierne a estos aspectos es reducida, para no decir
inexistente, pues son regulados, en general, por medio de los respectivos
estatutos de la Asambleas Legislativas. No obstante, es posible observar
alguna oscilación en términos de complejidad interna si ésta fuera me-
dida de acuerdo al número de comisiones permanentes existentes en el
poder legislativo, siendo la intuición teórica implícita en la proposición,
que un número más alto de comisiones indica mayor descentralización de
la actividad legislativa, lo que resulta, a su vez, en mayor complejidad. A
continuación, veamos entonces, el número de comisiones por estado.
De hecho, se verifica una variación significativa en el número de comi-
siones por Asamblea Legislativa, lo que, de acuerdo con nuestra expecta-
tiva teórica, causa un impacto apreciable en el proceso decisorio del legis-
lativo, incluyendo las decisiones acerca del nivel de gasto del área social.
Además, el número de comisiones servirá, no sólo para verificar la fuerza
de una explicación sustentada en el grado de autonomía de la asamblea,
sino también para calificar el efecto de la ideología del jefe del ejecutivo.
Cuadro 3 Número de comisiones permanentes en los estados brasileños

Estados No. de comisiones permanentes
RJ 27
SP 20
GO 16
PR 15
CE, MG 14
MA 13
AM, BA, MT, PA, RO 12
PE 11
MS, RS, SC, SE 9
AC, TO 8
AL, ES, PB 7
PI 6
RN 5
DF, RR 4
Media 10,8
P5331.indb 199 10/15/10 1:54:03 PM

Esto es, en la ausencia de una variable que mida directamente el carácter

dividido o unificado de un gobierno estatal, utilizaremos la capacidad de-
cisoria del legislativo como variable cuya interacción con la inclinación
ideológica del gobernador altera el impacto de esta inclinación en la con-
creción de las prioridades de políticas públicas del ejecutivo. En otras pa-
labras, la interacción de la ideología del gobernador con la complejidad
del legislativo (medida a través del número de comisiones permanentes
en las respectivas Asambleas Legislativas) servirá como substituto de una
interacción que finalmente indicaría la naturaleza dividida o unificada de
un gobierno de izquierda.
Pero, ¿cómo podemos medir, mediante un indicador relativo a la com-
plejidad interna de la asamblea, la distancia entre ejecutivo y legislativo en
términos de preferencias sobre policy? El raciocinio aquí es relativamente
simple y de naturaleza coyuntural: en el periodo cubierto en el experi-
mento subsecuente, en ninguna asamblea partidos de izquierda tuvieron
una presencia significativa, lo que nos lleva a asumir que, en general, el
legislador mediano de los órganos representativos de los estados brasi-
leños nunca se encuentra a la izquierda del espacio político. Así, cuando
observamos el caso de un estado gobernado por un político de izquierda,
es lícito concluir que enfrentará un legislativo mayoritariamente oposi-
tor. La variable institucional es fundamental aquí para decirnos hasta
que punto esta oposición será o no efectiva en el momento de definición
de las prioridades en términos de políticas públicas. Lo que haremos, en
suma, es un test indirecto sobre la posibilidad de explicación alternativa
a la tesis del UE sobre lo que pasó en términos de políticas públicas en el
ámbito subnacional brasileño, explicación anclada en la tradición teórica
neoinstitucionalista, según la cual, outcomes deben ser pensados como la
consecuencia de la conjugación de preferencias de los actores relevantes y
de las instituciones.
En la próxima sección presentamos el análisis empírico y los re-
sultados de las pruebas efectuadas a partir de las proposiciones antes
establecidas.
MODELO ESTADÍSTICO, METODOLOGÍA DE ANÁLISIS Y RESULTADOS
A los fines de investigar los determinantes de la política pública de na-

turaleza social en los estados brasileños, proponemos un modelo de aná-
lisis que identifica la influencia de variables políticas, tratada en la sección
anterior (ejecutivos de izquierda, complejidad de las respectivas Asam-
bleas Legislativas y interacción entre los ejecutivos de izquierda y la com-
plejidad de las respectivas Asambleas Legislativas) sobre el nivel del gasto
social. Las variables de control de naturaleza socioeconómicas son pro-
ducto interno bruto (PIB) per cápita, en su forma logarítmica, desempleo,
población mayor a sesenta y cinco años y población urbana. El análisis de
P5331.indb 200 10/15/10 1:54:03 PM

incidencia de ciclos económico-electorales en los estados brasileños será

verificado a través de pruebas de robustez.
Las investigaciones econométricas serán realizadas a partir de datos
agrupados (en inglés, pooled data) de veintisiete estados brasileños durante
el período comprendido por los años 1991 y 1997 (las dos primeras legisla-
turas tras la Constitución de 1988). El Modelo 1 consiste en:
GSi,t = b0 + b1Izqit
+ b2Comptlegit
+ b3IzqxComplegit
+ b4lgPIBit
+ b5Desit
+ b6Pob65it
+ b7Poburb it
Para verificar la robustez, sobre la existencia de ciclos económico-

electorales en los estados brasileños, el Modelo 2 utilizado es que el que
sigue:
GSi,t = b0 + b1Izqit
+ b2Comptlegit
+ b3IzqxComplegit
+ b4lgPIBit
+ b5Desit
+ b6Pob65it
+ b7Poburb it
+ b8Añoelectit
donde
GS = gasto en educación y salud a precio de diciembre de 1995/PIB

estatal,
Izq = dummy para gobiernos de izquierda,
Comptleg = número de comisiones permanentes en la Asamblea Le-
gislativa del estado i en el año t,
IzqxCompleg = producto de las variables “Izq” y “Compleg,”
Log PIB = PIB per cápita del estado i en el año t en su forma
logarítmica,
Des = variación del desempleo en proporción a la fuerza de trabajo
total del estado i en el año t,
Pob65 = porcentaje de la población con sesenta y cinco años o más del
estado i en el año t,
P5331.indb 201 10/15/10 1:54:03 PM

PobUrb = porcentaje de la población urbana del estado i del año t,

Añoelect = dummy para el año electoral del estado i en el año t,
i = estado (1, 2, 3, . . . , 27),
t = 1991. . . . 1997.
Para la variable dependiente gasto social (GS) será utilizada como in-
dicador la suma del porcentaje del gasto en educación (y cultura) y salud
(y saneamiento) dividido por el PIB estatal. Las variables de control de
naturaleza económicas son PIB per cápita (PIB) y Desempleo (Des). Las
variables de control de naturaleza demográfica son población mayor a se-
senta y cinco años (Pob65) y población urbana (PobUrb).14 Se agregan al
análisis los indicadores de naturaleza demográfica por considerarse que
existe una relación directa entre tales indicadores y los gastos sociales. De
acuerdo con Huber y otros (2004), la población en edad escolar y la pobla-
ción mayor o igual a sesenta y cinco años son indicadores que influencian
positivamente el gasto en educación/salud y seguridad/bienestar social,
respectivamente. En el caso del presente trabajo, por su parte, la variable
referente a la población en edad escolar no será incluida por poseer una
correlación con la variable referente a la población mayor o igual a sesenta
y cinco años. El signo negativo esperado de la variable pertinente a la po-
blación anciana se justifica por el hecho de que en Huber y otros (2004), la
población de sesenta y cinco años o más incide positivamente en el gasto
de seguridad/bienestar social, en mayor medida que en el gasto de educa-
ción y salud, foco de este análisis. Entonces, resulta razonable suponer que
cuanto mayor la proporción de población anciana en un estado, mayor la
suma de recursos públicos destinados al área de seguridad social y me-
nor, a las áreas de educación y salud.
La variable referente a la ideología del gobierno estatal fue construida a
través de un survey, realizado en 2001 por Cristiane Batista y Ximena Simp-
son, por entonces maestrandas del Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do
Rio de Janeiro (IUPERJ), a partir de informaciones recogidas mediante el
desarrollo de un cuestionario enviado a politólogos, sociólogos, juristas
y periodistas vinculados al área política en todos los estados del país.15
En este cuestionario, los entrevistados clasificaron ideológicamente16 los
14. Los datos correspondientes a las variables demográficas fueron extraídos de las
PNADs en los respectivos años para los cuales existió levantamiento del IBGE.
15. Dentro de los entrevistados constan Alan Lacerda (RN), Marcelo Baquero (RS), Bruno
Reis (ES, MG, RL e SP), Carlos Roberto Pio (DF, GO, MT e MS), Celina Souza (BA, CE, MA,
PE e SE), Antônio Octávio Cintra (MG, RJ e SP), Cleber de Deus (BA, CE, MA, PB, PE, PI, RN
e SE), Denise Paiva (GO, DF, MT e MS), Francisco Ferraz (PR, SC e RS), Helio Mairata (PA),
José Filomeno (CE), Jussara Reis (PR, SC e RS), Marcelino (AC, AP, PA, RO, RR e TO), Maria
Isabel Carvalho (DF, GO, MT e MS), André Marenco (PR, SC e RS), Francisco Meira (ES,
MG, RJ e SP), Pedro Roberto Neiva (DF, GO, MT e MS), Roberto Corrêa (AP, AM, PA e RR) e
Walder Góes (DF, GO, MT e MS).
16. Basados en la clasificación de Coppedge (1997).
P5331.indb 202 10/15/10 1:54:03 PM

mandatos de los gobernadores de sus respectivos estados, en las elec-

ciones de 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994 y 1998, en izquierda (1), centro-izquierda
(2), centro (3), centro-derecha (4) y derecha (5), con base en la plataforma
electoral de los gobernadores y no apenas utilizando su partido como
observación. La información recolectada fue posteriormente ponderada
y utilizada en la construcción de un índice ideológico utilizado en este
análisis. En este caso, los gobiernos clasificados como de centro-izquierda
y centro-derecha fueron incluidos en las categorías izquierda y derecha,
respectivamente. Se trata de una medición inédita en cuanto a la ideología
de los gobernadores en Brasil porque, en general, la clasificación ideoló-
gica de los gobiernos estatales se concibe con sustento en los partidos polí-
ticos y se verifica con la inclusión de variables dummy izquierda-derecha
(ver Blanco 2001). La clasificación de la ideología de los gobiernos estatales
partiendo de una base ampliada (no sólo el partido del gobernador, sino
también la orientación de las políticas públicas adoptadas por el gobierno)
es más eficiente y se aproxima más precisamente a lo que se desea medir,
que de la forma en que lo hacía la clasificación ideológica con base apenas
en los partidos de tales gobernadores.
La variable complejidad legislativa (Compleg), que mide el grado
de centralización del proceso decisorio en las respectivas Asambleas
Legislativas, corresponde al número de comisiones permanentes en la
Asamblea Legislativa de cada estado, que varía de cuatro a veintisiete (ver
cuadro 3).
Las variables que verifican la incidencia de ciclos económico-electorales,
para prueba de robustez, son año electoral (Añoelect), que asume valor
de 1 en los años electorales y 0, en el caso contrario. La confirmación del
control de gobierno sobre la máquina política estatal, corroborando la hi-
pótesis UE, será verificada si las pruebas indicaran un aumento del gasto
social en los años que haya elección. Como las elecciones estatales en Bra-
sil ocurren en el segundo semestre del año, será considerado año electoral
el propio año en que ocurren las elecciones.17
A continuación, en el cuadro 4, exponemos los signos esperados para los
coeficientes de las variables explicativas para el análisis de los estados.
La metodología adoptada para verificar las hipótesis del estudio
es el análisis econométrico de tablero, también conocido como series
17. Decidimos utilizar año electoral y no una variable que midiera la proximidad de las
elecciones en el tiempo por dos motivos: en primer lugar, año electoral es una variable que
ha sido utilizada con frecuencia en la literatura sobre política latinoamericana con muy
buenos resultados (ver Ames 1987; Amorim Neto y Borsani 2004; Borsani 2003; Mejía Acosta
y Coppedge 2001); en segundo lugar, los ciclos de gasto a lo largo de un año se concentran
fuertemente en los meses finales de ese mismo año, después de la definición más precisa
del monto de la recaudación, hecho que ciertamente crearía una perturbación en la lectura
que debe hacerse sobre los coeficientes. Tendríamos, en este caso, una especie de pequeños
ciclos más amplios.
P5331.indb 203 10/15/10 1:54:04 PM

Cuadro 4 Signos de los Coeficientes de las Variables Explicativas

Variable Explicativa Signo Esperado
Izq +
Comptlega –
IzqxCompleg –
PIB +
Desb +
Pob65 –
PobUrb +
Añoelect +
a
Nuestra suposición sobre el efecto aislado de la variable complejidad legislativa es que
ésta tendrá un impacto negativo sobre el gasto social de un estado. Esto se explica porque,
en general, las Asambleas Legislativas han sido dominadas por partidos a la derecha
del espectro ideológico. Así, siendo la inclinación de la asamblea más para la derecha,
teniendo ésta más autonomía decisoria, dada por la complejidad interna, entonces, sus
prioridades de gasto serán más probablemente expresados en decisiones de gobierno
más que en Asambleas Legislativas menos complejas. Es importante resaltar que aquí se
trata apenas de una suposición, siendo nuestra intención primordial verificar el efecto
combinado de gobierno a la izquierda y Asambleas Legislativas complejas sobre el nivel
de gasto social.
b
El signo esperado de esta variable presenta alguna ambigüedad. Así como es razonable
esperar que el aumento del desempleo lleve al gobierno a gastar más como forma de
estimular la economía, lo que nos lleva a suponer que el signo de la variable sea positivo,
por otro lado, en lo que toca a la incidencia del gasto, es posible imaginar que se intente
desplazar gastos hacia actividades que tengan impacto directo sobre el nivel de actividad,
como construcción civil y obras de infraestructura. De todas formas, en nuestro modelo
su coeficiente demostró valor significativamente diferente de 0 y por tratarse de una varia-
ble de control, entendemos que el resultado no produjo impacto relevante sobre nuestras
conclusiones. La misma observación vale para la variable población mayor de sesenta y
cinco años. Agradecemos a uno de nuestros dictaminadores anónimos de la LARR por las
ponderaciones sobre el signo esperado de estas dos variables.
agregadas.18 Este tipo de análisis permite considerar concomitantemente

la dimensión espacio (estados) y la dimensión tiempo (año).19 Gracias a la
utilización conjunta de información temporal y de unidades individuales,
los problemas de correlación de variables omitidas con las explicativas son
menores que aquellos encontrados en bases de datos simplemente tem-
porales, o también llamadas, en inglés, time series. Siguiendo la sugestión
18. En inglés: pooled time series – cross section analysis.

19. Este tipo de test reproduce el modelo elaborado por Batista (2008) para el estudio
comparativo del gasto social en América Latina. Los datos fueron ordenados por estado, o
sea, la segunda observación de la base (anual) es la observación del estado codificado con el
número 1 (Acre), en el segundo período (año). La observación siguiente a la correspondiente
al estado i en el período t es la observación correspondiente al estado i en el período t + 1.
La última observación del estado i es seguida por la primera observación del estado i + 1.
No fueron incluidas variables dummies para años para no crear problemas de pérdida de
nivel de libertad, lo que perjudica la precisión del modelo. Al margen fueron incluidas
dummies para años electorales.
P5331.indb 204 10/15/10 1:54:04 PM

de Beck y Katz (1995), el modelo se basa en una estructura auto-regresiva

común para todos los estados (fixed effects), en contraposición a una estruc-
tura diferente para cada uno (random effects). De acuerdo con los autores, la
superioridad de este tipo de modelización radica en el hecho de ser posi-
ble, de esta forma, capturar el efecto de las especificidades de cada unidad
de análisis eventualmente omitidas por el modelo, pero que pueden estar
relacionadas a las variables explicativas.
En la estimación de los parámetros del modelo seguimos el método
“panel corrected standard error” (ordinary least squares con desvío están-
dar corregido), sugerido por Beck y Katz (1995) para análisis de tablero de
dimensiones similares a las del presente trabajo. Una discusión presente
en la literatura se refiere a la utilización del lag de la variable dependiente
(Achen 2000; Beck y Katz 1995; Wawro 2002). Mientras que Beck y Katz sos-
tienen que la inclusión de valores desfasados de la variable dependiente
contribuye a controlar los problemas de auto correlación,20 los otros dos
autores se oponen a este procedimiento. Achen (2000) argumenta que la
auto-regresión distorsiona los resultados, en la medida en que sobrevalúa
el poder explicativo de la variable, ofuscando los efectos de las otras varia-
bles explicativas y/o provocando la alteración de los signos.
El debate técnico acerca de la mejor forma de especificación del modelo
todavía no está agotado. Cabe a los especialistas en econometría avanzar
en la discusión y proponer, a lo largo del tiempo, respuestas más consisten-
tes para los diversos problemas identificados. A los efectos de este artículo,
optamos por la segunda posición. Entendemos que el uso del desfasaje de
primer orden de la variable dependiente es pertinente cuando el modelo
no corrige una eventual correlación serial de los datos. Sin embargo, en
este trabajo para disipar dicho inconveniente, utilizamos como recurso es-
tadístico la correlación auto-regresiva de primer orden (AR1), que también
presupone una auto correlación común a todos los estados. Pensamos que
el uso concomitante del valor desfasado de la variable dependiente y de la
correlación auto-regresiva de primer orden es redundante, ya que ambos
apuntan al mismo problema: correlación serial.
Los resultados concernientes a los Modelos 1 y 2 pueden ser vistos en
la Tabla 1 que sigue a continuación.
Los resultados de las estimaciones del modelo I, detallados en la se-
gunda columna de la tabla I, cuyo poder de predicción es de 97 por ciento
(R2 ajustado), corroboran la primera proposición del trabajo, según la cual
el nivel del gasto social tiende a aumentar en gobiernos de inclinación
ideológica de izquierda. Las pruebas que emplean el gasto social agre-
gado como variable dependiente revelan que, a un nivel de 5 por ciento
20. La inclusión de un valor desfasado (auto-regresivo) de la variable dependiente im-

plica que el valor de esa variable en el año “t” está siendo explicado, en parte, por el valor
de esa variable en el año anterior (t – 1) (Beck y Katz 1995).
P5331.indb 205 10/15/10 1:54:04 PM

Tabla 1 Determinantes del gasto social en los estados brasileños: 1991–1997

Variables Modelo 1 Modelo 2
Izq 15.13** 13.57**

(6.96) (6.22)
Compleg −6.73*** −4.74**
(2.55) (2.33)
IzqxCompleg −1.22* −1.07*
(0.67) (0.62)
LogPIB −6.84 −3.77
(9.09) (7.35)
Des −3.35 −3.29
(2.43) (2.55)
Pob65 −0.00 −0.00
(0.00) (0.00)
PobUrb 0.00*** 0.00*
(7.19e-06) (8.08e-06)
Añoelect — −2.87
(3.38)
R2 Ajustado 0.97 0.97
Pr (efectos fijos estado = 0) > chi2 0.000 0.000
Rho −0.08 −0.12
N 123
*p < 0.1; **p <<0.05; ***p < 0.01
de significancia estadística, gobiernos de izquierda invierten en una me-

dia de 15 puntos porcentuales más en educación y salud que los demás
gobiernos (derecha y centro). Tales resultados corroboran nuestra hipóte-
sis, según la cual—contrariando la teoría de ultrapresidencialismo estatal
(UE)—los gobernadores de los estados brasileños tienen prioridades de
políticas públicas y se esfuerzan para hacer valer tales prioridades. En este
caso, su inclinación ideológica es un factor determinante: gobernadores a
la izquierda del espectro ideológico tienden a privilegiar políticas socia-
les, en mayor medida que los gobernadores de las otras tendencias.
Los testes del Modelo 1 corroboran incluso la segunda proposición del
trabajo, que toma en consideración la complejidad legislativa con la cual
el gobernador del estado precisa convivir en su mandato. De acuerdo con
tal hipótesis, los gobiernos de izquierda con alta complejidad organiza-
cional en la Asamblea Legislativa (medida por el número de comisiones
permanentes) tienen su gasto social reducido. Los ensayos estadísticos
revelan que a un nivel de significancia estadística de 10 por ciento, los go-
biernos de izquierda con alta complejidad organizacional en la Asamblea
Legislativa, presentan un gasto social reducido en promedio a 1 punto
porcentual. O sea, los resultados de los análisis econométricos revelan
P5331.indb 206 10/15/10 1:54:04 PM

que el nivel del gasto social en un estado es función de la complejidad

organizacional de la Asamblea Legislativa de este estado. Esta proposi-
ción es corroborada más aún en el Modelo 1: la variable que mide tal com-
plejidad aparece estadísticamente significativa en un nivel de 1 por ciento
y con signo negativo, indicando que el gasto social agregado (educación
+ salud) se reduce en promedio 6 puntos porcentuales cuanto mayor es el
número de comisiones permanentes de cada estado.
Los resultados del Modelo 2, cuyo poder predicativo es también de
97 por ciento (R2 ajustado), que verifican la existencia de ciclos económico-
electorales en los estados brasileños, se exponen en la columna tres de
la misma tabla. En este modelo, se mantienen el significado y los signos
previstos de las variables políticas y de aquella referente a la población ur-
bana. Así y todo, la variable concerniente a años electorales, que explora la
incidencia de tales ciclos en los estados brasileños, no presentó relevancia
estadística significativa en ningún nivel.
Dentro de las variables socio-económicas, la única que reveló signifi-
cancia estadística, de 1 por ciento en el Modelo 1 y de 10 por ciento en el
Modelo 2, y signo positivo conforme a lo esperado, fue población urbana.
Los resultados de ambos modelos indican que cuanto mayor el índice de
población urbana del estado, mayor el nivel del gasto social de este mismo
estado.
DISCUSIÓN Y CONCLUSIÓN
Los resultados de las verificaciones indican que nuestras dos hipóte-

sis principales fueron confirmadas. Las hipótesis nulas de la inexistencia
de un efecto positivo de la ideología del gobernador sobre el nivel del
gasto social y de la ausencia de impacto negativo del número de comisio-
nes, aún en gobiernos controlados por la izquierda en este mismo nivel
de gasto, fueron descartadas con un nivel de confianza de 5 por ciento y
10 por ciento, respectivamente. Admitiendo la debilidad de este efecto, se
percibe, de todos modos, que para un gobernador de izquierda, el resul-
tado de enfrentarse con una Asamblea Legislativa compleja es nada más y
nada menos que la modificación substancial de sus prioridades de políti-
cas públicas. Por su parte, en la verificación de la robustez, expuesta en el
Modelo 2, columna 3 de la tabla 1, la variable año electoral, utilizada para
medir la pertinencia de la hipótesis UE, no demostró un efecto estadístico
significativo. O sea, no es posible descartar la hipótesis nula de la desvin-
culación entre año electoral y el nivel de gasto social en un estado.
Desde el punto de vista de los impactos más generales de tales resulta-
dos sobre el actual estado del arte en los estudios institucionalistas pode-
mos destacar por lo menos tres puntos.
En primer lugar, es fundamental llamar la atención hacia la fuerza de
los presupuestos básicos de la concepción clásica del neoinstitucionalismo:
P5331.indb 207 10/15/10 1:54:05 PM

preferencias, concebidas como la ubicación de los actores en un espacio

unidimensional izquierda—derecha en relación con las decisiones de apli-
cación de recursos públicos; y las instituciones, entendidas como reglas
que definen derechos y distribuyen incentivos de manera diferenciada,
deben permanecer como referencia en la elaboración teórica al respecto
de cómo funciona el proceso de toma de decisiones en diversos contextos
(settings) políticos.
En segundo lugar, es relevante resaltar que, al contrario de lo que po-
drían suponer análisis inspirados por la noción de ultrapresidencialismo
estatal en Brasil, existe significativa variación institucional en el ámbito
subnacional brasileño y que esa variación produce diferencias importan-
tes y sistemáticas sobre el comportamiento de los gobiernos estatales. De
especial interés para la discusión más centrada en el legislativo es el des-
cubrimiento de que la complejidad institucional de las asambleas son una
variable central para el entendimiento de cómo se da la decisión en torno
del gasto público en el área social. La teoría informacional de organiza-
ción legislativa, en particular, ofrece pistas esenciales para el montaje de
buenos modelos, capaces de dar cuenta de la variación institucional en-
contrada en sus impactos en términos de policy outcomes.
Por último, no se debe subestimar el alcance de los resultados que tie-
nen que ver con los efectos de la variable ideológica (léase preferencias)
sobre las decisiones del gasto social. En las innumerables versiones sobre
las disfuncionalidades de la democracia brasileña la cuestión de que los
partidos son medios ineficaces de comunicación con los electores y de que
la ideología es un elemento virtualmente ausente en las disputas políticas.
Nuestros resultados no autorizan tal conclusión. Además, como son retira-
dos de un experimento aplicado a los estados brasileños, no autorizan una
versión de la política estatal en Brasil según la cual todo el proceso político
en ese ámbito sería definido de acuerdo con las conveniencias de la figura
del gobernador. La imagen recurrente con la que opera el sentido común
es que en Brasil, la política en el ámbito subnacional es un asunto de las
elites y de las oligarquías, que se disputan el control de las maquinarias
electorales locales, disputas en general vencidas por algún cacique que fi-
nalmente consigue dominar todo el proceso decisorio a nivel estatal. Esta
imagen adquirió, en 1998, el tratamiento académico correspondiente con
la publicación del libro de Fernando Abrucio, Os barões da federação. Poste-
riormente, se han publicado una serie de trabajos que indican la fuerza de
los gobernadores en el proceso político brasileño, fuerza que transborda
la frontera de las respectivas unidades federales, impactando de manera
significativa en la vida política nacional.
Ahora bien, los resultados empíricos alcanzados en el presente estudio,
derivados del argumento que expone la importancia de elementos como
ideología e instituciones legislativas en la configuración del conflicto polí-
tico también a nivel estatal, valen de contrapunto interesante para aquella
P5331.indb 208 10/15/10 1:54:05 PM

percepción sobre el proceso decisorio e institucional en la Federación Bra-

sileña. Es nuestra convicción que, a partir del esfuerzo perpetrado aquí, se
vuelva necesario el ahondamiento de la teoría y de la investigación empí-
rica en relación a la política democrática de los y en los estados de nuestro
país.
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1998 Os barões da federação. São Paulo: Hucitec.
Abrucio, Fernando, y David Samuels
1997 “A ‘nova’ política dos governadores: Política subnacional e transição democrática
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Achen, Christopher
2000 “Why Lagged Dependent Variable Can Suppress the Explanatory Power of the
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1994 “Divided Government, Fiscal Institutions, and Budget Deficits: Evidence from
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Ames, Barry
1987 Political Survival: Politicians and Public Policy in Latin America. Berkeley: University
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2004 “Presidents and Cabinets: The Political Determinants of Fiscal Behavior in Latin
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1998 Processo de governo no município e no estado. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade de
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2005 “The Effect of Capital Mobility, Trade Openness, and Democracy on Social
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Batista, Cristiane C.
2008 “Partidos políticos, ideologia e política social na América Latina: 1980–1999”. Da-
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Beck, Nathaniel, y Jonathan N. Katz
1995 “What to Do (and Not to Do) with Time-Series: Cross-Section Data”. American
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Blanco, Fernando
2001 O comportamento fiscal dos estados brasileiros e seus determinantes políticos. Rio de
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1997 “Political Parties and Supply Side of the Economy: The Provision of Physical and
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1997 “A Classification of Latin American Political Parties”. Kellogg Institute Working
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Fiorina, Morris
1996 Divided Government. New York: Macmillan.
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P5331.indb 212 10/15/10 1:54:06 PM
R E V I E W E S S AY S
M O B I L I Z I N G A N D N E G O T I AT I N G
MEANINGS
Studies in the Dynamics of Colonial-Imperial
Transformations in Art, Science, Law, Historiography, and
Identities in the Ibero-American World, 1500–1800
Sara Castro-Klarén
Johns Hopkins University
Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas: Empires, Texts, Identities. Ed-

ited by Ralph Bauer and José Antonio Mazzotti. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, for the Omohundro Institute of Early Ameri-
can History and Culture, 2009. Pp. ix + 503. $75.00 cloth, $27.50 paper.
Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, 1500–1800. Edited by
Daniela Bleichmar, Paula De Vos, Kristin Juffine, and Kevin Sheehan.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Pp. xxii + 427. $65.00
cloth.
Invasion and Transformation: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the
Conquest of Mexico. Edited by Rebecca P. Brienen and Margaret A.
Jackson. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2008. Pp. xii + 231.
$55.00 cloth.
Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico. By Brian P. Ow-
ensby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008. Pp. x + 379. $65.00
cloth.
Secret Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World. By María M.
Portuondo. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Pp. xii + 335.
$45.00 cloth.
P5331.indb 213 10/15/10 1:54:06 PM

El discurso colonial en textos novohispanos: Espacio, cuerpo y poder.

By Sergio Rivera-Ayala. Woodbridge, U.K.: Tamesis, 2009. Pp. viii + 221.
$105.00 cloth.
Measuring the New World: Enlightenment Science and South America.
By Neil Safier. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008. Pp. xviii +
387. $45.00 cloth.
The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and
Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca. By Yanna Yannakakis. Durham, NC:
Duke University Press, 2008. Pp. xxi + 290. $79.95 cloth, $22.95 paper.
If the philosophical inquiry of Edmundo O’Gorman into the construct-

edness of America as a “new world” had the virtue of reorienting colonial
studies away from an empirical or narrative approach that assumed the
subject position of European explorers, colonizers, and imperial histori-
ans, the discovery of Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala’s Primer nueva corónica
y buen gobierno (1615) by the Danish scholar Richard Pietschmann in 1908
had the effect of reintroducing Amerindian actors into an historical scene
occupied mainly by European men cast as protagonists of conquest and
its political and cultural aftermath.1 Critiques of O’Gorman’s process of in-
vention contributed in multiple ways to the polemics that in 1992 marked
the controversial memory of 1492, much as the trend to deconstruct, reex-
amine, and contest historiographical assumptions and methods, fueled in
part by the postmodern critique at large, informs the books under review
here. However, these books seek to revise and, in some cases, challenge
established narratives of empire in accord with disparate concerns that
respond, each in its own way, to the parameters of the author’s field (art
history, ethnohistory, literary history, Spanish history).
Though revisionary, these interventions do not have in mind similar
or related outcomes. For instance, the stated aim of the three studies on
cosmographers, botanists, and cartographers in the Spanish and Portu-
guese empires between 1500 and 1800 is to revise the understanding that
Iberians did not engage in scientific work during that period. Almost un-
related and beyond the Spanish science polemic, Neil Safier engages vari-
ous discursive operations in the production of the New World and its rela-
tion to the development of Enlightenment science. Safier’s erudite study
of Charles Marie de La Condamine’s scientific expedition to measure the
world from 1735 to 1745 problematizes the heroic image of the explorer
“out there,” as Michel de Certeau conceives of the space of exploration. In
paying intense attention to the reception and circulation of knowledge,
goods, and specimens, both in Europe and in South America, Safier paints
1. Edmundo O’Gorman, La invención de América (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura

Económica, 1958).
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MOBILIZING AND NEGOTIATING MEANINGS 215
a complex and illuminating picture of the making and mobilization of

meanings, understandings, and misunderstandings during the second
half of the eighteenth century.
As does Safier, Brian P. Owensby engages the question of cultural trans-
formations in his superb study of Spanish law and its encounter with In-
dian justice in late-colonial Mexico, as ideas, institutions, and actors trav-
eled the asymmetrical settings of empire. The involvement and agency of
Amerindian subjects in the power dynamics of empire appear at center
stage, both in Owensby’s Empire of Law and Indian Justice in Colonial Mexico
and in The Art of Being In-Between, by Yanna Yannakakis. Amerindians
as agents or subjects of knowledge and art come into view in strongly
redefined and theorized secondary spaces in Safier’s Measuring the New
World and in Invasion and Transformation, an interdisciplinary collection
of essays that reconsider images of the conquest of Mexico. Deploying the
problematics of “mythistory” (Mathew Restall), mimicry (Safier), and per-
formative identities (Yannakakis), as well as the notion that possession is
never total in colonial situations but instead always contested and precari-
ous (Owensby), these books shed vibrant light on the dynamics of social
and intellectual life at local spatiotemporal sites in the vastness of empire.
Negotiations of meaning and power in Paris, Mexico City, Goa, Madrid,
Oaxaca, and Lisbon become visible in rich and full detail. The exhaus-
tive and judicious use of archival materials introduces new players to the
world stage of empire and tells stories that were only partially known,
such the Encyclopedists’ reception of La Condamine, or largely ignored,
such as the Indian rebellions in Oaxaca in 1661 and 1700.
Beyond the different disciplinary and historiographical approaches
evinced in these studies, it is important to highlight their authors’ meticu-
lous readings of archival and published sources. Perhaps the other shared
characteristic or underlining theme in all these books is the singular role
of imperial crowns and their representatives. Bureau cosmographers,
navigators, cartographers at sea or at court, judges, painters, architects,
and even the insurgent Indians who become visible in these studies are
all interpellated by a system of production (of knowledge, subjectivities,
arts, and power), which the Crown ultimately presided over. In filing and
assessing chronicles written in the field, reporting on mines and ports
in the New World, crafting new laws, negotiating spaces-in-between for
colonial accommodation with Indians, receiving and cataloging paintings
and botanies, censoring, and limiting the scope of scientific exploration,
the Crown’s agents played an inevitable and determinant role.
The Crown and its organic intellectuals make regular, if at times unex-
pected, appearances in most scenes of the theater of empire here assem-
bled. The close relations between the imperial state and its informational
and discursive needs remain undertheorized in a good many studies on
science, and even in new work on chronicles read as literature, because
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such ties are taken for granted, assumed as a feature of empire. The con-
tributions of Restall and Michael J. Schreffler to Invasion and Transforma-
tion, however, are excellent examples of how a critical revamping of such
assumptions can lead to a fuller and more accurate understanding of par-
ticular paintings, boticarios, voyages of discovery, and other cultural phe-
nomena in the fabric of empire.
SCIENCE
Science in the Spanish and Portuguese Empires is part of an effort to reas-

sess the roles of Spain and Portugal in early modern science. This trend
originated, according to David Goodman, in the 1992 celebrations of
Columbus’s first voyage, which motivated Spanish intellectuals, and in-
deed the government, to launch an ambitious program of research, led
by the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, on the “history
of culture and science with reference to relations between the Old and
the New World” (10–11). Another impetus was the idea that the narra-
tive of Western science had failed to take into consideration the work of
cosmographers, cartographers, and botanists working under the aegis of
the Spanish and Portuguese crowns. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra explains
in his preface that the volume intends to recover and examine examples
of Spanish and Portuguese “practices of science during the early modern
period,” so as to point to their “contribution to the Scientific Revolution in
Europe and abroad” (xix). The fourteen essays by North American, Ibe-
rian, and Brazilian scholars range widely in period, topic, and approach,
and they evince a broad understanding of the term science. Much of this
research is based on fresh archival material, informed by an empirical ap-
proach, and rendered in direct prose.
The collection opens with a most helpful historiographical review of
Portuguese imperial science by Palmira Fontes da Costa and Henrique
Leitão. It then moves to a variety of intriguing topics, such as Juan Pimen-
tel’s intellectual history of the Spanish baroque theologian, ascetic, and
collector Juan E. Nieremberg (1595–1658). Shifting to the colonies, Martha
Few examines the imbrications of gender, medicine, and the state in a spe-
cific setting in “Medical Mestizaje and the Politics of Pregnancy in Colo-
nial Guatemala, 1660–1730.” In these and other case histories—of the cos-
mographer Juan López de Velasco in the Casa de Contratación in Seville,
his successor Nieremberg at the Palace of the Count-Duke of Olivares, the
1606 voyage of Pedro de Quiróz to the western Pacific island of Espiritu
Santo, the collection of medicinal plants and treatments in Goa and their
dissemination in Portugal’s global empire—scientific knowledge takes
shape as the accumulation of information for holding and dispensing in
specific political situations, as befits the parameters of collecting in a pre-
Linnaean and pre-Newtonian universe.
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In some sense, this endless extracting and collecting led more to the
problematics of the cabinet of curiosities than to the laboratory. In the
former, the challenge the New World posed to European learning and
epistemologies dissolved into a catchall assemblage of the rare, the sin-
gular, and the extraordinary. Because such activity was carried out at the
limits of an unsuitable epistemology that included reasoning by analogy,
as Pimentel shows in regard to Nieremberg, its association with Newto-
nian science remains doubtful, if not confusing, as Pimentel and Paula
de Vos both point out. The difference between doing modern science and
organizing a cabinet of curiosities needs to be clarified. From Pimentel’s
comments, as well as from Goodman’s article and María Portuondo’s dis-
cussion of the polemics of science in the introduction to her Secret Sci-
ence: Spanish Cosmography and the New World, the reader is left to wonder
whether the attempt to include medieval cosmography and technologies
has not extended the term science beyond its historical and epistemologi-
cal limits. Pimentel observes that “the fate of the Hispanic monarchy in
the development of modern science seems trapped within the same para-
dox as is baroque culture,” for both “imperial science and the baroque arts
[are seen] as foreign bodies in the making of modernity” (93). Pimentel
notes that, unlike Newton, Nieremberg “did not deduce any fundamental
laws of nature” and “[h]is works on natural philosophy and natural his-
tory, seen retrospectively, do not contain a single idea that has turned out
to be decisive in the development of our knowledge” (97). This is not to say
that debate on the practice of science in early modern Iberia is no longer
needed. However, a clear difference emerges from this volume between
the activity of Spanish cartographers, laboring at their desks in palaces
and libraries, and Portuguese maritime science and cartography. Only the
latter, based on exploration and empirical research, produced a series of
findings marked by true, physical, and practical links to the natural world
to provide a foundation for its understanding.
Portuondo’s Secret Science constructs a powerful narrative on the re-
lationships among three cosmographers—Alonso de Santa Cruz, López
de Velasco, and Juan Bautista Gesio—and the apparatus of censorship in
imperial Spain. This book begins with a necessary first chapter on the
adaptation, in Renaissance thought, of Ptolemy’s cosmography to the
epistemological challenge the New World’s difference posed. A number
of influential studies over the past decades have addressed from different
perspectives the profound discomfort and displacement experienced in
European intellectual and artistic circles in the face of America’s mate-
rial and cultural realities. These include Michel de Certeau’s L’écriture de
l’histoire (1975); Antonello Gerbi’s La natura delle Indie nove (1975); Anthony
Grafton, April Shelford, and Nancy Siraisi’s New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The
Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (1992); and Walter Mignolo’s
The Darker Side of the Renaissance (1995), to name just a few.
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For historians of the Renaissance such as Grafton, “[t]he encounter be-

tween Europe and America juxtaposed a vast number of inconvenient facts
with the elegant theories embodied in previously authoritative books.”2
For cultural analysts such as Mignolo, this reconstruction and analysis of
Europe’s discomfort falls short of the mark, for it reinscribes Europe as
the subject of its enunciation, leaving the rest of the world as the object.
Mignolo accordingly seeks instead “to inscribe the ‘darker side of the Re-
naissance’ into the silenced space of Spanish/Latin America and Amer-
indian contributions to universal history and to postcolonial theorizing.”3
To meet this challenge, it is necessary to shuttle constantly across the At-
lantic and across epistemologies, as in Barbara E. Mundy’s The Mapping of
New Spain: Indigenous Cartography and the Maps of the “Relaciones geográfi-
cas” (1996) or Mignolo’s own account of the darker side of epistemologies
born and deployed in the crucible of conquest and empire.
Portuondo maintains a firm focus on events taking place in Madrid and
more specifically at institutions integrally connected to the king’s political
interests. Her erudite study of court and cabinet goes a long way toward re-
covering and narrating the vicissitudes of discomfort and the transforma-
tions wrought in Spain’s inherited cosmography, both at authorized sites of
learning such as universities and at sea. Her own background in engineer-
ing allows her a clear understanding of the science at hand, particularly in
explaining the technical difficulties that sailors encountered in using the
navigational instruments at their disposal. She examines the intricacies
of humanist navigational manuals, which “sought to establish the art of
navigation on a theoretical footing consistent with established principles
of natural philosophy. Authors drew upon the principles of the sphere as
systematized by Sacrobosco, the fundamentals of Ptolemaic cartography,
and, in varying measures, practical nautical experience to produce this im-
mensely popular genre” (50). Spanish sailors and manuals alike not only
benefited from adapting Ptolemaic ideas and instruments to new Atlantic
realties but also owed some of their information to Portuguese roteiros.
By the end of the sixteenth century, Portuondo shows, traditional cos-
mography had reached its limits, especially when confronted with the im-
possibility of producing a description of the New World from within the
parameters of its discipline. The task now became to organize and present
useful information to the Spanish Crown so it could effectively rule its
empire. Besides military force, evangelist priests, and colonial adminis-
trators, Spain needed hegemonic access to accurate information. To that
2. Anthony Grafton, with April Shelford and Nanci Siraisi, New Worlds, Ancient Texts:
The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1992), 5.
3. Walter D. Mignolo, The Darker Side of the Renaissance: Literacy, Territoriality, and Coloni-
zation (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995), xi.
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end, the Crown turned to the Casa de Contratación in Seville, where cos-
mographers such as López de Velasco were entrusted with the production
of knowledge and, most particularly, the secrecy of that enterprise. Se-
cret Science tells the intriguing story of three sites of knowledge—casa (de
contratación), consejo (de Indias), and corte (real)—to show the enabling and
paradoxical constraints of the material and intellectual conditions under
which cosmographers such as López de Velasco, Santa Cruz, and Gesio at-
tempted to carry out their twofold task: on the one hand, to describe, clas-
sify, and understand the New World on the basis of Old World paradigms
and, on the other hand, to make their findings of difference intelligible to
uninformed yet influential others—as well as to keep all the data secret
and pass the censors.
Relying on an abundance of fresh archival sources, such as the cor-
respondence of López de Velasco, Portuondo deftly intertwines her fig-
ures’ biographies with ample discussion of how they developed methods
of inquiry to retrieve and assemble the data deemed necessary for their
cosmographies. In the end, these well-educated consummate bureaucrats
appear overwhelmed by the power games they were obliged to play in
the absence of tenure and to carry out a task that was already beyond the
reach of cosmography. Because the work of these bureau cosmographers
was never published, and because of Portuondo’s original research into
these figures’ attempt to find a secondary mode to represent what they
(mistakenly) took to be raw empirical data, Secret Science opens a window
onto a long-neglected area in Spain’s intellectual history: the production
and administration of knowledge for a few policy makers, many of whom,
like the king, lacked any expertise in cartography.
In contrast, Measuring the New World treats the public performance of
science and other knowledge in the France of Denis Diderot’s Encyclopédie,
ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751). La Con-
damine’s voyage to Quito in 1735 and return via the Amazon River speaks
of movement, displacement, dispersion, and planned and unexpected en-
counters with other subjects of knowledge. Safier writes a complex social
and intellectual history of La Condamine’s entanglements with Spanish
American Creoles such as the distinguished cartographer Pedro Vicente
Maldonado, Amerindian informants in Quito, and his vexed journey down
the Amazon. It seems that, in the eyes of La Condamine, there was no im-
portant difference between the information obtained from questioning
Amerindians about their geographic knowledge and that borrowed from
local Creole cartographers. Once back in Paris, he erased the provenance
of his scientific information and presented it as his own. In his story of the
tangle of disputations that make up La Condamine’s voyage and the sub-
sequent wrestling for public acclaim and scientific credit in cosmopolitan
Paris, Safier also provides an informative explanation of Jorge Juan and
Antonio de Ulloa’s expedition, and the controversy that surrounded it.
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In focusing on scientific exploration in the postencyclopedia eighteenth

century, Safier brings to the fore the reception and construction of cultural
understanding. A telling case is his examination of the reception accorded
to the abbreviated and reorganized translation (1744) of Inca Garcilaso de
la Vega’s Comentarios reales (1609), whose first French translation appeared
in 1633. The disfiguring mutilation of the Comentarios reales is placed in
two contexts. One is the craze for all things Inca that hit Paris in the mid-
eighteenth century, Voltaire’s Alzire (1736) being a chief example. The sec-
ond relates to the Encyclopedists’ search for a discursive modality able to
transpose the order of the things displayed in the cabinet of curiosities
into the alphabetic classificatory system adopted for the universal reach
of their Encyclopédie.
As Michel Foucault observed in Les mots et les choses (The Order of
Things, 1965), Jorge Luis Borges perceived and ironically examined this
dilemma in his “El idioma analítico de John Wilkins” (1941). Foucault
noted that Borges “quotes a ‘certain Chinese encyclopaedia’ in which it
is written that ‘animals are divided into: (a) belonging to the Emperor,
(b) embalmed, (c) tame, (d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous, (g) stray
dogs, (h) included in the present classification.’”4 This uncanny under-
standing that the criteria used in taxonomy are all equally arbitrary in
their relation to reality led Foucault, in turn, to question “all the familiar
landmarks of my thought—our thought, the thought that bears the stamp
of our age and our geography—breaking up all the ordered surfaces and
all the planes with which we are accustomed to tame the wild profusion
of existing things, and continuing long afterwards to disturb and threaten
with collapse our age-old distinction between Same and Other.”5 Safier
catches a particular moment in this process, in which La Condamine’s
accounts of material and social life in South America, and even the muti-
lated translation of Inca Garcilaso, provided a forum to share and assess
new knowledge from overseas. However, Safier summarizes, “the chal-
lenge of how to reduce the natural knowledge into parsed, alphabetically
organized units on the printed page remained unresolved. Textual spaces
abided by a different kind of organizational logic than the institutions in
which physical objects were stored and managed. This transposition of
specimens, from the cabinet to the catalogue, represented a shift between
two radically different representational modes” (241).
One of the most interesting aspects of Measuring the World is its refusal
to focus on La Condamine, Paris, or Europe alone. Instead, it situates La
Condamine’s acts in direct relation to his interlocutors, bringing to the
4. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences (New
York: Random House, 1971), xv. Foucault cites Borges’s essay “El idioma analítico de John
Wilkins” (1942), as republished in Otras inquisiciones (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1952).
5. Foucault, Order of Things, xv.
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fore important and previously effaced Spanish American and Amerin-

dian actors. Safier’s narrative indeed moves back and forth across the At-
lantic, opening, for example, not in 1735 with La Condamine’s prepara-
tions in Paris or with the controversy attending a project to go “out there”
to measure the world for the purposes of science and empire, but instead
with a festival held in 1739 in the remote village of Tarqui, in the province
of Quito, to keep alive the memory of the past by enacting scenes and
plays. La Condamine witnessed this event, which included a reenactment
of the Spanish reconquest and an interlude commemorating the recent
visit of the French scientists. In Safier’s retelling, a group of young Tarqui
mestizos “wheeled out several wooden devices, constructed and painted
specially for the occasion, and began to fiddle with the virtual parts just as
a Parisian astronomer might calibrate a quadrant or a zenith telescope. . . .
Using improvised writing implements, they scribbled data onto small
sheets of invisible paper” in an act of communication that suggests that,
“to encompass the world with their instrumental observations[, Europe-
ans] had to rely on the active participation of resident guides, laborers, and
knowledge brokers” (2–3). Although La Condamine admired the accuracy
of this performance and the Tarquis’s keen observation, in the end, the
Amerindians merited, at best, his laughter. For Safier, however, this “An-
dean pantomime” remained “inscrutable,” for it resists our interpretation
even if we resort to notions of mimicry or reverse ethnography. I wonder
if this “pantomime,” as labeled by our taxonomic system, might have (an-
other) meaning in Andean rhetoric. Alas, we have only La Condamine’s
record and logic of the event, which, for Safier, reveals that “science is a
socially circumscribed and materially bounded spectacle” (5).
This Foucauldian conception of science as spectacle informs Safier’s
interpretation of the many displays, actions, and acts of reception in his
groundbreaking work. Each chapter presents a canvas whose variegated
threads imply the effaced but always dialogic or triangulated relation of
the scientist’s discourse to local knowledge, colonial agents, and sites of
enunciation. This is most evident when Safier discusses France’s thirty-
year Inca craze, which had its apogee in the nearly simultaneous issue of
La Condamine’s Relation abrégée d’un voyage fait dans l’intérieur de l’Amérique
méridionale (1745) and the abridged Comentarios reales (1744), an exposition
on the Inca empire at the Jardin du Roi and France’s agricultural crisis and
famine. Though intended to portray the Inca as an example of superior
imperial rule, the abridged text of Garcilaso’s work could not overcome
the denigration of Amerindian peoples and learning that Spanish chroni-
clers bequeathed as a gesture of empire. As a result, Safier contends, this
abridgment was akin to the specimens displayed at the Jardin du Roi,
because the Comentarios lost their historical thrust and became instead “a
botanical theater” (209). Safier’s entire book, and this chapter especially,
will interest not only historians of science and empire but also scholars
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of literature and visual arts, for he unfolds a keen set of concepts to facili-
tate the understanding of forms and modes of cognition that transcend
disciplines.
LETTERED SUBJECTS AND EMPIRE
Sergio Rivera-Ayala also brings an interdisciplinary outlook to his

discussion of the construction of space, the masculine body, and power
in Spanish chronicles of the seventeenth century. Writing in the wake
of Enrique Dussel’s challenge to self-centered European accounts of the
conquest and to the “myth of modernity” (3), Rivera-Ayala reconnoiters
with a fresh spirit the well-worn but never exhausted letters, reports, and
chronicles that, in Europe’s rather narrow archive, depict American space,
nature, and Amerindian bodies as a chapter in the annals of the excep-
tional and monstrous. Informed by a keen reading of the bibliography on
the construction of the Other, he takes up where Pimentel’s comments on
Nieremberg left off, linking the Other in descriptions of the New World
to medieval Orientalism as it was still embodied in Europe’s constrained
encyclopedism. His discussion of the oikoumene, the monstrous, and the
emergence of white skin as a sign of beauty exemplifies the painstak-
ing research and renovation that he brings to the study of the medieval
epistemes that informed colonialism. His chief concern is not to locate
the exact textual origin of images of monsters and cinocéfalos (dog-headed
beings) but to point to the political import of those images, which arose
in Christian Europe’s struggle with the rival Moors. For Rivera-Ayala, the
images were part of a strategy of domination based on the idea that mon-
strous bodies could afear or make ugly the presumed order and harmony
of the established order and the homogenous self-identified community.
Stretching this thesis to the eighteenth century and what he calls “el
ambiente geopolítico de la ‘conciencia planetaria’” (165–176), Rivera-Ayala
argues that, despite Spain’s displacement from what G. W. F. Hegel called
“the heart of Europe” (157), a second discourse emerged in Europe under
the cloak of science and civilization to attempt yet another conquest of
America. In contrast, and in consonance with O’Gorman’s deployment of
the term invention, Creoles in Mexico attempted to revalidate “la histo-
riografía del Nuevo Mundo que estaba siendo negada por Europa . . . ,
con la cual se realizaba la re-invención y la reconquista criolla de los ter-
ritorios americanos” (188). Not unlike Safier, Rivera-Ayala seeks to show
how the language and spectacle of science projected a deriding fatalism
about the original peoples of America, here typified by the humid humors
to which they were subject, according to Buffon and De Pauw. However,
Rivera-Ayala does not close with a European view of Amerindians. In-
stead, he moves on to study of the Jesuit Francisco Javier Clavijero, whose
works moved to counter the contemptuous view of French Encyclopedists
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and scientists. Rivero-Ayala insists that Clavijero’s vindication of Amerin-

dian historiography negated the harmful planetary taxonomy of Europe’s
colonialist discourses and provided a foundation for the nascent republic
of Mexico.6
Further expanding the scope of colonial social and discursive spaces,
the twenty essays of Creole Subjects in the Colonial Americas juxtapose well-
known topics from the study of Spanish America—Guamán Poma, can-
nibalism, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, New Christians—to examples of
creolization in England’s colonies, including studies on the literary Chesa-
peake between 1680 and 1750, as well as William Byrd II and the language
of science and satire in British America. As the editors explain, the intent
is to foster comparative American studies on a north-south axis. Many of
the essays accordingly review the debate on the meaning and political de-
ployment of colonial difference—difference understood as inferiority—
which Safier and Rivera-Ayala also examine. In this, humoral differences
are of special interest, as they connect to the historiography of science and
empire. In a more literary vein, David S. Shields shows how the heroic fig-
ure of the English privateer is part and parcel of the English discourse of
expansionism and how it was deployed in the context of the Black Legend.
Jeffrey H. Richards shows how ideas about cultural change and difference
evolved as they were transplanted to British America because of consider-
ations involving the nature of climate and landscape of the New World.
Several essays about the eighteenth century complement what we have
seen on the vexed participation of Spanish American scientists and the
role of Amerindian past in European debates by bringing to the fore ne-
glected figures in the Spanish American canon, such as the savant Pedro
de Peralta Barnuevo and the poet José Joaquín de Olmedo. The collection
as a whole also shows the impact of O’Gorman, postcolonial theory, and
the challenge of subaltern studies while, more important, holding forth the
promise of dialogue between fields that operate in very different scholarly
traditions. Comparative work remains a future task for many, as it is not
easy for individuals to undertake mastering different archives. To do so
requires a new hermeneutics of reading, as David Damrosch proposes in
How to Read World Literature.7
COLONIAL “PEACE” AND THE EXHAUSTION OF SITES OF NEGOTIATION

The richly detailed studies of Owensby and Yannakakis do not so much
describe colonial life as offer a textured feel for the intricacy and complex-
ity that empire brought to the lives of ordinary people, in this case, to In-
6. In the latter assertion, Rivero-Ayala follows the analysis of David A. Brading.

7. David Damrosch, How to Read World Literature (New York: John Wiley and Sons,
2009).
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dians in Mexico. Owensby opens by reconceptualizing the law, depicting

it not so much as an imposition from a location of power but, in America,
as a medium through which Indians channeled their thirst for order and
justice. Accordingly, “law and its processes . . . can be thought of as a
politics by another name, a means to reclaiming the political for the colo-
nial period” (11). Owensby’s exhaustive archival research assembles a set
of petitions and lawsuits, which both men and women brought, seeking
protection, clear titles to land, guarantees of individual liberty, or resolu-
tion of matters of tribute and governance. In one superb chapter after an-
other, these people appear embarked on a dual process of representation.
To plead their causes effectively, they had to become fully cognizant of the
law, its rhetorical nuances and quirks, and the possibilities of bending it to
their advantage. As subjects shaped by legal protections, Indians also had
to engage the politics of the law, constantly negotiating its meaning and
action with the Crown’s representatives. Owensby strives to bring out the
“enormous perplexities” (9) imbedded in each case and their representa-
tion in a range of legal documentation, haunted by an awareness that the
penumbra of a vexed and often-paradoxical struggle for justice mars the
clarity to which he aspires.
Empire of Law and Indian Justice examines Indians’ efforts to order their
existence in the aftermath of conquest (chapter 2), the relentless litiga-
tion by which they sought to make the king protector of their well-being
(chapter 3), centuries of lawsuits over ownership of land (chapter 4), and
Indians’ struggle to achieve some measure of liberty under Spanish rule
and to avoid complete servitude (chapter 5). The chapters relate a story of
contestation, negotiation, transculturation, a story of how both Spaniards
and Indians became subjects of Spanish imperial law. They also paint
the very slow, costly, almost-sacrificial, and uneven gaining of agency by
individual Indians and communities living under the coercive setup of
coloniality. This colonial peace, which relied on the hope of royal protec-
tion and fostered the Indians’ obedience to the idea of the common good,
began to unravel in the face of relentless abuse and unaccountability by
elites and administrators. By 1656, the corregidor of New Spain, Barto-
lomé de Góngora, was forced to acknowledge that a Hobbesian world was
now in place, and it went by the name of aprovechamiento, that is to say, ad-
ministrative office afforded the appointee and his family an opportunity
to exploit Indians to leave the office wealthier and more powerful. Under
such a universal attack on their person and possessions, some Indians
began to feel (though perhaps not in the same words) what the cacique
Fabián Martín, leader of the Tehuantepec rebellion of 1660–1661, said be-
fore he was hanged: “My brothers, I do not die as a traitor to the King
our Lord, nor for disobedience, nor for having led an uprising, but for the
repartimientos” (250). Oaxaca’s Indians had begun to realize that their
hopes for royal justice were perhaps misplaced, given that the king was
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so far away and greedy peninsulares and Creoles were a daily reality in the
struggle for land (repartimientos).
From the thousands of legal cases that Owensby studied, it is not hard
to see that litigation did, in the end, despite the narrow and punishing
space colonial practices afforded, contribute to the emergence of Mexico’s
Indians as subjects of the law and as contenders for agency in the minds
of contemporary peninsulares, Creoles, and mestizos. The discourse of
amparo and culpa taught them where and how to find protections and how
to win small concessions and redresses. As Owensby explains, it therefore
“makes no sense to think of New Spain’s indigenous people as having
‘virtually no agenda of their own’” (302). However, it also follows that ac-
commodation, negotiation, and negative political participation cannot re-
place equal rights and full citizenship in the affairs of the commonwealth;
for, as both Owensby and Yannakakis show, things eventually unravel
in huge and costly rebellions. On such occasions, Indians paid yet again,
with more lives and punishments, even when they made paper gains,
as occurred in the Tehuantepec rebellion of 1661 and forty years later in
northern Oaxaca.
In September 1700, after one hundred years of pacification (not peace)
and evangelization in the region of Oaxaca, Mexico, the Zapotec residents
of San Francisco Cajonos rose in violent rebellion in response to a new
campaign to extirpate idolatry. Not unlike earlier campaigns in Peru, this
campaign affected not only questions of religious belief but also the entire
living structure of the Zapotec. The first chapters of Yannakakis’s remark-
able book examine how “loyal vassals” morphed into “seditious subjects,”
“idolaters,” and rebels,” and how, in the anxious vocabulary of empire,
these subjects were reclassified as “good and faithful Indians” between
1660 and 1700. This deft analysis is made possible not by considering the
rebellion of Cajonos under the fixed terms of a racio-hierarchical classifi-
cation but by deploying a critical interrogation of the very taxonomy and
power relations in play.
With the lens of performance theory, Yannakakis maintains that Span-
ish rule, not content with the use of grisly punishments or every other
tool in the arsenal of spiritual conquest, including confession, thoroughly
reorganized the Mexican church and state, leaving prior intermediaries in
limbo but serving the rulers’ interest more efficiently. Part of this recon-
struction involved what Yannakakis ably terms a “symbolic warfare” that
pitted “good and faithful Indians” against “idolaters” (94). The latter ac-
cusation was so feared that it drove many cultural practices underground,
menacing the Zapotecs’ cultural survival, as subsequent chapters on new
strategies for negotiating local rule between 1700 and 1770 show. In this
period, wealthy and poor caciques were once again called to play the du-
bious role of intermediaries. The wealthy were able to use their economic
status and litigation skills to renegotiate their relationship to the town
P5331.indb 225 10/15/10 1:54:08 PM

council, or cabildo. For Yannakakis, the case of the cacique Miguel Fernán-
dez de Chaves, which she studies in detail, shows that pre-Hispanic “he-
reditary nobility may have disappeared in its old form, but that those ca-
ciques with the requisite cultural skills persisted as a new kind of elite by
adapting to a political order in which their sources of power were cultur-
ally hybrid, rather than ‘indigenous’ or ‘Iberian’” (155).
Yannakakis’s cultural and political history of Indian colonial subjects
ends by exploring how native intermediaries shaped the impact of the
Bourbon reforms, which, beginning in 1763, intended a centralization that
threatened their gains in autonomy. Bourbon hostility toward native lan-
guages and local customs amounted to yet another wave of symbolic war-
fare by the state. The Indian allies rewarded with exemptions from tribute
for their fidelity had the most to lose. Indian intermediaries—sacristans,
cabildo officers, legal agents—saw their social and political spaces con-
strained by the Bourbon reforms, whose new racio-hierarchical categories
did not distinguish between historically and performatively constituted
differences. This leveling of Indians with the elimination of their purchase
on power, Yannakakis contends, helped loosen their relationships to the
Crown and speeded the processes that led to the wars of independence.
Yannakakis remarks that, as her book was going to press, the people of
Oaxaca are “suffering through another period of intense turmoil” (227),
thereby stretching the import of her study into the present. Her story of
two colonial rebellions in Oaxaca acquires particular relevance for the on-
going Zapatista rebellion in Chiapas and the politics of Indian agency in
various Latin American nation-states.
I close this review by considering Invasion and Transformation, an inter-
disciplinary collection that nevertheless achieves an unusual level of co-
herence, perhaps because all of its essays deal with paintings, maps, and
other artifacts selected for the 2003 exhibit “Visions of Empire,” which
featured seventeenth-century paintings of the conquest of Mexico from
the Jay I. Kislak collection. The anthropologists, art historians, and liter-
ary critics in this volume insightfully engage the relationship between
painterly narrative and state sponsorship, examining glorifications of
Hernán Cortés and the portrayal of Moctezuma as pusillanimous (“of a
small soul,” in Latin), how indigenous subjects negotiated the story of
Moctezuma and omens about the imminent demise of Aztec rule, and
other aspects of the trauma of conquest and evangelization depicted in
mestizo art.
Knowledge of indigenous languages always makes for stunning contri-
butions to colonial studies. A case in point is the puzzling Spanish depic-
tion of Moctezuma as a timid and cowardly man, only too anxious to con-
vey his empire to the king of Spain, despite the fact that his name means
“angry lord” in Nahuatl (3). We have to wonder how this elemental fact
escaped so many until Susan D. Gillespie brought it to light in her careful
P5331.indb 226 10/15/10 1:54:09 PM

study of the sources (by Bernardino de Sahagún and others) that con-
structed it. Gillespie addresses the force that Cortés’s version of events has
had, observing that, “despite the evidentiary shortcomings, every popu-
lar and almost every scholarly account of the Conquest accepts that these
narratives have a degree of historical veracity” (31). This is because of,
Gillespie argues, the persistence of a positivist, literal-minded “approach
in Western history, despite the fact that this mind-set has been under at-
tack within the discipline since the 1930s. The positivist school assumes
that historical events exist pre-formed within documents and merely have
to be extracted through historians’ methods of critical analysis” (32).
As does Gillespie’s essay, Invasion and Transformation in general empha-
sizes the problem of representation, the failings of cross-cultural commu-
nication, and the transformative dynamics of conquest and coloniality. A
case in point is Restall’s “The Spanish Creation of the Conquest of Mexico,”
which shows how baroque painting coincided with imperial Spain’s liking
for battle scenes that displayed the horse as an invincible war machine. The
Spanish hero on horseback was at his best in depictions of Cortés tram-
pling frightened Indians. Restall discusses how, by 1600, there appeared
a consistent narrative, or “mythistory” (a term Dennis Tedlock coined8),
a “vision of the historical past heavily infused with misconceptions and
partisan interpretations so deeply rooted as to constitute legend or myth”
(94). Histories sponsored and published by the Crown perpetuated this
vision of the conquest of Mexico, Restall adds. As each history drew on
the preceding, a consolidated and unassailable narrative emerged. In 1661,
Antonio de Solís became royal chronicler and subsequently published his
Historia de la conquista de México (1684). This officially authorized book dis-
tilled more than one hundred years’ worth of repetitions of Cortés’s apo-
theosis, becoming a textual matrix for the mythistory of eight paintings
about Spain’s victory at Tenochtitlán. Schreffler also inquires into the vari-
ous ways that paintings and their iconographic systems reflect imperial
historiography and an ideological debt to Solís.
Other scholars in this volume ask why there was official interest in
sponsoring depictions of Mexico’s conquest at the end of the seventeenth
century. In closing this review, it is important to point out that this ques-
tion is relevant to nearly all of the texts, maps, exhibits, and voyages of
exploration analyzed in the books under review. The answer seems to
lie in the political fears and anxieties of imperial crowns engaged in con-
quering and governing other peoples. By 1680, Spain was in the midst of
a profound political and economic crisis underscored and indeed epito-
mized by the physical and mental weakness of Carlos II. A similar anxi-
ety gripped France as it sought to harness the world’s wealth a century
8. Popul Vuh: The Definitive Edition of the Mayan Book of the Dawn of Life and the Glories of
Gods and Kings, trans. and ed. Dennis Tedlock (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), 64.
P5331.indb 227 10/15/10 1:54:09 PM

later, as Safier discusses. The same was true of the Creoles who used the
Amerindian past to ground their new nations. In each case, there was an
exacerbation of the feelings that permeate and color the relationships of
Europeans and Amerindians in the space of coloniality. The books under
review offer systematic and detailed accounts of important episodes in
the dynamics of the rise and fall of European empires and thus in the
making of modernity. In this sense, they are relevant to many ongoing
discussions on empire and its colonial underside.
P5331.indb 228 10/15/10 1:54:09 PM

SHIFTING REALITIES IN SPECIAL
PER IOD C U BA
Archibald R. M. Ritter
Carleton University
Che’s Afterlife: The Legacy of an Image. By Michael Casey. New York:

Vintage Books, 2009. Pp. 388. $15.95 paper.
The Cuba Wars: Fidel Castro, the United States, and the Next Revolu-
tion. By Daniel P. Erikson. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2008. Pp. xiii +
352. $28.00 cloth.
Political Disaffection in Cuba’s Revolution and Exodus. By Sylvia Pe-
draza. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Pp. xix + 359.
$28.99 paper.
Looking Forward: Comparative Perspectives on Cuba’s Transition.
Edited by Marifeli Pérez-Stable. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2007. Pp. xx + 332. $27.00 paper.
Cuba in the Shadow of Change: Daily Life in the Twilight of the Revo-
lution. By Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb. Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, 2009. Pp. 272. $69.95 cloth.
Cuban Currency: The Dollar and Special Period Fiction. By Esther
Whitfield. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Pp. 217.
$22.50 paper.
Revolutionary Cuba’s golden age ended in 1988–1990, when the former

Soviet Union adopted world prices in its trade with Cuba, ceased new
lending, and discontinued its subsidization of the Cuban economy. The
result was the economic meltdown of 1989–1994. In 1992, President Fidel
Castro labeled the new époque the “Special Period in Time of Peace,” a title
that has, in 2010, lasted almost two decades. Many outside observers have
imagined that Cuba would in time follow Eastern Europe and the for-
mer Soviet Union in making a transition toward a more market-oriented
economic system and perhaps a Western style of pluralistic democracy.
This has not happened. The modest economic changes of the early 1990s
have not led to sustained reform. Political reform has been almost unde-
tectable. At times, rapid change has seemed inevitable and imminent. But
at others, it has appeared that gerontocratic paralysis might endure well
into the 2010s. Change will undoubtedly occur, but its trajectory, timing,
P5331.indb 229 10/15/10 1:54:09 PM

and character are difficult, if not impossible, to predict. When a process

of transition does arrive, it will likely be unexpected, confused, and er-
ratic, and it will probably not fit the patterns of Eastern Europe, China, or
Vietnam.
The books included in this review focus mainly on changing reali-
ties during the Special Period and on the nature of prospective change,
thus contributing valuably to the understanding of a range of issues in
Cuba’s existence in this era, which is in fact not special but instead the
real world. The collection edited by Marifeli Pérez-Stable assumes that a
transition will occur and asks what useful insights may be gleaned from
the experiences of other Latin American, Eastern European, Asian, and
Western European countries. These analyses constitute the best explora-
tion to date of key aspects of the alternatives possibly available to Cuba in
the future. Daniel P. Erikson’s Cuba Wars examines U.S. domestic policies
and relations with Cuba during the Special Period and concludes with
the chapter “The Next Revolution.” His historical yet popular treatment
of this tragically dysfunctional relationship is probably the best and most
readable available. The culture of Cuba’s silent majority, or shadow public,
is the focus of Amelia Weinreb. She fills a major vacuum in scholarship of
the past twenty years by applying sociological-anthropological analysis
to the character, aspirations, and behavior of a group that has been almost
ignored, even though it probably constitutes a majority of Cuba’s popula-
tion. Sylvia Pedraza examines Cuba’s evolving domestic political situation
and the consequences for emigration in the past half century, including
the two decades of the Special Period. Her analyses of immigrants’ moti-
vations and the patterns of immigration are likely to be seminal. Although
perhaps outside the common purview of social science, Michael Casey
provides a novel and convincing examination of how Cuba’s government
has capitalized on Che Guevara’s brand—epitomized by Alberto Korda’s
iconic photograph—and how Che’s image has been commercialized for
political and financial ends, through property and trademark law, as well
as the marketing mechanisms of international capitalism. Finally, Esther
Whitfield explores cultural and literary changes in Cuban fiction in the
Special Period, examining the impact of a two-currency pathology on the
incentives and orientations of Cuban writers.
Pérez-Stable has assembled an all-star cast of authors to produce yet
another fine contribution to the understanding of Cuba and its current
situation.1 Looking Forward aims to investigate the alternatives facing Cuba
after a possible regime change or “poof moment”—as Jorge Domínguez
puts it (7)—when such change might occur, as if by magic. The authors
were asked to examine their particular areas of expertise for insights from
1. Full disclosure: I evaluated this edited collection before publication for the University
of Notre Dame Press.
P5331.indb 230 10/15/10 1:54:09 PM

SHIFTING REALITIES IN SPECIAL PERIOD CUBA 231
other democratizing processes, the particular relevance of the conditions

of the Special Period, and the “plausible and/or desirable alternatives . . .
for a Cuba in transition” (7). Given the concision and richness of the twelve
essays in the book, it is difficult, if not impossible, to outline and critique
them in the detail that each of them merits in a brief review. All are sub-
stantively first rate.
In opening, Pérez-Stable assumes that “a medium-term democratic
transition is likely in Cuba though not certain” (19). She first explores
the transitions of Eastern and Central Europe and Latin America for in-
sights into the Cuban case, and second, the possible roles in a post–Fidel
Castro Cuba of the Communist Party; the National Assembly; and the
Association of Combatants of the Cuban Revolution, Cuba’s veterans’ or-
ganization. Her central conclusion is that a hybrid regime is most prob-
able, one that combines elements of marketization and liberalization with
continued authoritarianism. Jorge Domínguez is reasonably optimistic
that further downsizing of the Cuban military will occur with the nor-
malization of U.S.-Cuban relations. He also argues that the military will
be compatible with democratization under three of four scenarios: (1) a
dynastic succession with continued Communist Party monopoly and the
inception of a market economy, (2) a military focused on internal secu-
rity after the cessation of external threats, (3) an internally focused yet
stronger military to maintain public order in the face of domestic threats,
and (4) an internally focused military with a major role in international
peacekeeping (61–70).
The legal and constitutional dimensions of moving toward representa-
tive democracy and a market economy are the concern of Gustavo Ar-
navat, who maintains that major constitutional amendments or a new
constitution approved by referendum will be needed. Damián Fernández
presents a thought-provoking and sobering analysis of the role of civil so-
ciety, emphasizing the difficulty of political reengagement and the devel-
opment of support for participatory citizenship. Mala Htun puts forward
a balanced discussion of Cuba’s achievements and lingering problems in
the same area of transition politics, as well as of the impact of the Special
Period on women and gender equality. She concludes that “[a]chieving
gender justice . . . requires greater economic growth and political reforms”
(137). Alejandro de la Fuente also outlines Cuba’s achievements since 1959
and some of the setbacks for Afro-Cubans since 1990, including a smaller
share of remittances and relatively less employment in tourism and high-
end self-employment. His main conclusion is that special antidiscrimina-
tion policies will be necessary in the transition to a market economy. Jorge
Pérez-Lopez contributes a fine analysis of the economic policy reforms
needed for transition. In his first-rate essay, Carmelo Mesa-Lago carefully
reviews the impacts of the Special Period on social welfare—education,
health, social services, poverty, and income equality—and outlines the
P5331.indb 231 10/15/10 1:54:10 PM

range of policy approaches needed if Cuba is to maintain social justice

while providing incentives to economic improvement.
Corruption has been a curse for Cuba since its independence. Corrup-
tion has evolved in unique ways there since 1990, and it has tended to
escalate seriously in Eastern European transitions, as Erikson shows in
his contribution to Looking Forward. Lisandor Pérez addresses the politi-
cally complex and difficult role of Cuban émigrés in any future transition,
though perhaps not with due emphasis on how Cuban Americans are
likely to contribute to institutional development, trade linkages, invest-
ment projects, return migration, and tourism. Rafael Rojas provides an
insightful exploration of the psychological and political transformations
that must occur in this same area, in which polarized and implacable
enemies—each claiming ownership of historical interpretation—must
become loyal adversaries, competing yet cooperating within democratic
rules. Finally, William LeoGrande provides a superb survey of U.S.-Cuban
relations during the Special Period and of U.S. relations with former ad-
versaries, so as to address the future dealings of the two neighbors. In
its entirety, this fine volume sets a high standard that will be difficult to
surpass. What would have been good to see, however, is another chapter
on how Cuba might get to and through a transition to achieve genuine
democracy and a mixed-market economy. One might also question the
editor’s decision against the citation of sources so as to reach a broader,
less academic audience. This book should indeed reach a wide public, but
the absence of the citations hardly seems necessary for that purpose.
In a market well supplied with books and reports on U.S.-Cuba re-
lations, Erikson’s Cuba Wars is perceptive, objective, and engaging. His
work is based on general political analysis from his vantage point at the
Inter-American Dialogue in Washington; on interviews with many key
players on Cuban issues in Miami, the U.S. Congress, the policy commu-
nity, and academics; and on his own knowledge of Cuba, attained dur-
ing many visits to the island over the past decade. For those who have
lived through the U.S.-Cuba relationship over the past decade or the past
50 years, Erikson’s discussion will be enjoyable as well as insightful. His
narrative style is captivating and brings again to life various events at the
center of U.S.-Cuban interaction: the Elián González affair, the tenure of
James Cason as chief of the U.S. Interests Section, Cuba’s shooting down of
an aircraft operated by Brothers to the Rescue, the conviction of the Cuban
spy Ana Belén Montes, the so-called five Cuban heroes, and the eviction
of Cubans from a hotel in Mexico City by the U.S. Treasury Department’s
Office of Foreign Asset Control. Erikson’s discussions of Castro’s relation-
ship with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, the Cuban American community in
Miami, and the pressures promoting and obstructing a greater role for
market mechanisms in Cuba are all captivating and substantive. His vi-
gnettes of congresspeople with important roles in policy making with
P5331.indb 232 10/15/10 1:54:10 PM

respect to Cuba are fascinating. If I have any quibbles with the book, it
is with the title, which seems overamplified, as there has not been a war
between the two countries. The “Next Revolution” referred to in the title
is not impossible, but I would think that a difficult but orderly evolution
toward Western-style participatory democracy and a more centrist form
of economic organization are more probable.2
In Cuba in the Shadows, Amelia Rosenberg Weinreb explores and ana-
lyzes the lives, behavior, and views of “ordinary Cubans.”3 These Cubans
are familiar to those who have come to know Cuba during the Special
Period. They probably constitute a large majority of the population. These
“unsatisfied citizen-consumers,” as Weinreb calls them (2, 168), strive to
survive with some access to basic “modern” goods, above and beyond
what the ration book provides in an amount insufficient for life main-
tenance since 1990. These modern goods perhaps include some luxuries
but also many basics such as toilet paper and women’s hygiene products,
which are available only in “dollar stores” or tiendas de recaudación de divi-
sas (stores for the collection of foreign exchange). This silent majority has
remained underanalyzed and largely ignored by scholars, perhaps—as
Weinreb suggests—because they do not seem to merit special attention
relative to indigenous peoples, the poor, or labor unions, or perhaps be-
cause they do not fit the orientations of new social movement and struc-
turalist Marxist approaches.
Weinreb’s ethnographic participant observation succeeds in producing
an analysis from about as deep within Cuban realities as it is possible for
an outsider to get. Her success can be attributed in part to her research
assistants and neighborhood ambassadors, namely her three young chil-
dren, Maya, Max, and Boaz, who helped to establish rapport, friendship,
and shared parenting bonds with Cubans who empathized and wanted
to help a young mother. This family fieldwork provides a unique window
into Cuban society and the lives of Cubans.
Weinreb’s focus is a shadow public, somewhat analogous to the shadow
economy, as the following explains:
[U]nsatisfied citizen-consumers . . . share interests, characteristics, a social imag-
ery and practice, but their political silence, underground economic activity, and
secret identity as prospective migrants casts a shadow over them. They are there-
fore a shadow public, an un-coalesced but powerful group that engages in resis-
tance to state domination but without a public sphere, and only in ways that will
allow them to remain invisible while maintaining or improving their families’
economic welfare. (168)
2. One minor detail: Fidel Castro’s hometown was not Bayamo but Birán, not far from
Cueto and Mayarí, both immortalized in the song “Chan Chan” by the Buena Vista Social
Club.
3. I served as reader for the University Press of Florida for the original manuscript of this
volume. I was as impressed with it then as I am now.
P5331.indb 233 10/15/10 1:54:10 PM

The roots of the shadow economy of course predate the Revolution, in-
deed going back to the colonial period and its unofficial economy of smug-
gling and contraband, as reflected in the expression obedezco pero no cumplo
(I obey but do not comply). However, the character of central planning itself
generated the expansion and pervasiveness of today’s shadow economy,
as did the circumstances of the Special Period, as analyzed in chapter 1.
Chapters 2 and 3 examine how citizens strive to maintain private space
and personal control in the context of the state’s domination of personal
life and economic activity. Chapters 4–6 explore a range of survival strate-
gies. Chapter 4 focuses on the concepts and practices encapsulated by the
terms resolver, luchar, conseguir, and inventar, each with unique connotations
in the context of the Special Period. Chapter 5 investigates the significance
of material things—and the lack thereof. Chapter 6 treats the importance
of access to foreign exchange, or convertible pesos. Weinreb here presents
a Cuban class system that puts the “red bourgeoisie” at the top, followed
by artists with privileged access to travel and foreign exchange earnings;
“dollar dogs” or cuenta propistas (own-account workers) with access to
tourist expenditures or remittances from friends or relatives abroad; “un-
satisfied citizen consumers”; and finally, at the bottom, the “peso poor”
who lack access to foreign exchange and additional earnings (all quotes
on 105). The final chapters examine the broad-based phenomenon of feel-
ing trapped and the dream of escape via emigration. Chapter 8 explores
off-stage expressions of dissatisfaction, criticism, and resistance, which
remain purposely hidden, unorganized, and outside of public space. This
state of affairs may be changing, however, with the Damas en Blanco and
bloggers courageously breaking into the public arena, spearheaded by
Yoani Sánchez. Finally, chapter 9 draws together the strands of Weinreb’s
analysis and explores the relevance of the concepts of shadow public and
unsatisfied citizen-consumer in the broader context of Latin America.
Weinreb succeeds admirably in describing and analyzing Cuba’s silent
majority, those “ordinary outlaws” who are decent, hardworking, entre-
preneurial, and ethical, yet must defend themselves and their survival
through myriad economic illegalities in the framework of a dysfunctional
economic system. These people live within the doble moral, effectively
cowed into acquiescence by a political system whose main escape valve
is criticism, innocuous at first, but then increasingly bitter, followed by
emigration. The shadow public perhaps constitutes a potential shadow
opposition but the governments of the Castro brothers seem to easily
contain and control it. One might conclude from Weinreb’s work that
this population—currently disengaged and thinking incessantly about
emigration—is ripe for public reengagement and that in time there may
occur a surprisingly rapid mobilization for change.
Weinreb’s analysis raises some additional questions. Under what cir-
cumstances might a shadow opposition become organized, finding a
P5331.indb 234 10/15/10 1:54:10 PM

strong voice to become a real opposition? Will the new citizen-journalists

of Cuba’s blogging community—plus critics such as Vladimiro Roca, Ós-
car Espinosa Chepe, Marta Beatriz Roque, Elizardo Sánchez, the Damas
en Blanco, and some Catholic organizations—be able to break the con-
trol of the Communist Party and the current leadership? Will normaliza-
tion of relations with the United States and the ending of the external
threat—a siege mentality long used as a pretext for denying basic political
liberties—further erode control of the party and create new political align-
ments in Cuba?
Like the flag raised by Máximo Gómez in Cuba’s struggle for inde-
pendence but sewn by Victoria Pedraza, her grandaunt, Sylvia Pedraza
intends her book to contribute to Cuban history. Political Disaffection in
Cuba’s Revolution and Exodus, Pedraza’s magnum opus so far, is indeed a
splendid contribution. It examines the political, social, and economic his-
tory of Revolutionary Cuba, exploring its impact on citizens and on emi-
gration decisions and patterns from 1959 to midway through the first de-
cade of the present century. The scope of the work of course goes beyond
the Special Period, whose emigrants are the most recent product of a se-
ries of four waves from Revolutionary Cuba, following those of 1959–1962,
1962–1979, and 1979–1989.4 These emigrations serve as organizing periods
for Pedraza, who offers a careful reading of the history of the Revolution,
using participation and observation from within the Cuban American
community and among Cubans on the island, 120 in-depth structured
interviews with a representative selection of émigrés from 1959 to 2004,
personal documents of émigrés, and census and polling information. Of
special interest in this engaging and moving mix (which few academics
manage to achieve) are Pedraza’s personal odyssey and insights as a child
of the Revolution, quasi–Peter Pan émigré, and returnee with the Antonio
Maceo Brigade in 1979. The account of her reunification with an extended
family that she had not seen since leaving Cuba is particularly poignant.
In Che’s Afterlife, Michael Casey follows Korda’s famous photograph
of a Christlike Ernesto “Che” Guevara into the consciousness of people
around the world. This image is a well-defended and trademarked icon
(copyright VA-1–276-975) owned by Korda’s daughter, Diana Díaz, and
used in collaboration with the government of Cuba. For some, it is a quasi-
spiritual symbol of hope for a better future; for others, a symbol of un-
defined but earnest youthful rebellion; and for still others, an abhorrent
symbol of authoritarianism. Casey, a Dow Jones Newswire bureau chief
in Buenos Aires, has written an intriguing history of the image’s trajec-
4. The return visits of Cuban Americans, who turned out not to be gusanos (worms)—the
dehumanizing label given to them by the Cuban government—but instead mariposas (but-
terflies), as they were relabeled with typical Cuban humor, in part sparked the emigrations
of 1979–1989.
P5331.indb 235 10/15/10 1:54:10 PM

tory over the past half century. He brings together research into the lives
of both Korda and Guevara, a command of the history of Revolutionary
Cuba, knowledge of countries where the Guevara mythology is impor-
tant, an understanding of copyright law, and original investigative inter-
viewing and reporting.
Casey begins with the instant when the photo was taken on March
5, 1960. He sketches Che’s role in the new government—notably as chief
of La Cabaña prison and overseer of the swift executions of prisoners—
his secretive and disastrous Congo operation, and his guerrilla campaign
in Bolivia, putting the launch of Che as icon and the heroic Revolution-
ary brand at the October 18, 1967, memorial ceremony at the Plaza de la
Revolución. Casey also presents an account of Korda’s activities in Ha-
vana, the first publications of his photograph, and the cultural ferment of
the early years of the Revolution, followed by the disillusionment of many
in the mid-1960s. He traces the peregrinations of Korda’s Che through Ar-
gentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Miami, as well as in the student ferment
of 1968 from Paris to Berkeley. His later chapters focus on the use of Che’s
image as a brand by the government of Cuba; here, it no longer signi-
fies a heroic guerrilla promoting revolution but has instead become an
advertisement, selling Cuba in the international tourist marketplace. The
essence of the image is now “the idea of revolutionary nostalgia” (306).
After some thirty-seven years during which the photograph was freely
available for use by anyone, copyright ownership now applies and control
is enforced through legal means when necessary.
Casey takes us on a fascinating journey through the life and afterlife
of Che and through a half century of international social and political
history, using Che’s image as a prism. His book should find a wide reader-
ship, of all political stripes, who have an interest in Cuba or in major politi-
cal and social movements. Those with interests in marketing, branding,
and copyright law will also find this volume illuminating.
I must confess that, when I agreed to include Cuban Currency: The Dol-
lar and Special Period Fiction in this review, I thought it was an analysis of
Cuba’s monetary system, not having read the title carefully. To my initial
trepidation, Esther Whitfield focuses instead on literature but in the con-
text of Cuba’s dual-currency pathology. Her survey of recent fiction has
turned out to be a delight, even for an economist with little direct knowl-
edge of Cuban literature.
Whitfield’s central argument is that the Special Period generated a boom
in cultural exports, including literature, because of the opening of Cuba’s
economy and society, the subsequent expansion of international tourism
and popularity of all things Cuban, the decriminalization of the use of the
dollar, its adoption as a legal currency, and its quick ascent to supremacy
over the old peso. Special Period literature then became market driven—
like many other activities in Cuba—with authors’ incomes dependent on
P5331.indb 236 10/15/10 1:54:11 PM

foreign sales and hard-currency contracts rather than on Cuba’s literary

bureaucracy and membership in the writers’ union. The shrinkage of the
domestic peso market for books, because of declining incomes, further
strengthened the dominance of the foreign market. This new foreign-
market orientation was formalized by legislation in 1993 that permitted
authors to negotiate their own contracts with foreign publishing houses
and to repatriate their royalties under a relatively generous tax regime. As
did other Cuban citizens, authors responded quickly to these new incen-
tives. Special Period fiction is set in a “real” Cuba of interest to foreigners,
namely in the Cuba of a behavior-warping dual-currency system, urban
decay, dysfunctional Soviet-style economy, and political gerontocracy, to-
gether with a vibrant Afro-Latin culture and time-immemorial tropical
eroticism. Ironically, the international boom in Cuban fiction during the
sunset of the Revolution was a sequel to the literary boom of the 1960s,
which was set in the confidence and vigor of the youthful Revolution.
Whitfield begins with an analysis of the circumstances of the Special
Period that pushed authors into an external orientation. She then focuses
on the works of Zoé Valdés, especially her award-winning I Gave You All
I Had (1966), published in exile in Paris, which allows Whitfield to trace
the central role played by a U.S. dollar bill and its symbolic relevance for
the culture of the Special Period. Short stories are the subject of the next
chapter, with particular attention to the work of Ronaldo Menéndez. His
story, titled “Money,” is also set in the world of the doble moneda and doble
moral but criticizes the reliance on foreign markets and worries about
the jineterización (or “prostituting”) of the writer-publisher relationship
and possible debasement of “true” Cuban literature. Whitfield goes on to
examine the work of Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, notably the five books of his
Ciclo Centro Habana. Gutiérrez writes for a foreign readership but also
critiques it, placing the reader in the position of voyeur into the “lives of
sexual disorder, moral depravity and economic despair” of Havana (98).
In her final chapter, Whitfield meditates on artists’ depictions of Cuba’s
urban decay and on critical analyses of such depictions.
Whitfield has produced a fine analysis of how economic circumstances
generated new problems and new possibilities for Cuban authors, who
have risen to the challenge and produced a literature of broad inter-
national appeal. Whitfield’s writing is engaging, her knowledge seems
profound, and her subject is enchanting. However, I am not a competent
critic of Cuban literature or literary criticism and cannot tender a confi-
dent evaluation of its value for scholars in these fields. Her book, linking
social, political, and economic circumstances of the Special Period to Cu-
ban literature, will nevertheless interest a broad range of social scientists,
as well as the more literary minded.
Is the international market for Cuban fiction as transitory as one might
expect or hope that the Special Period itself may be? Perhaps. It may be
P5331.indb 237 10/15/10 1:54:11 PM

that when Cuba escapes the Special Period and becomes a “normal” coun-
try with a normal monetary system, the special interest in its literary por-
trayal may diminish. However, the difficulties of economic and political
reform are likely to continue for some time and are likely to take vari-
ous twists and turns that will hold interest for some time to come. I hope
that Cuba’s fiction writers are there to illuminate the process for a world
readership.
P5331.indb 238 10/15/10 1:54:11 PM

T H E T R A N S F O R M AT I O N O F V E N E Z U E L A
Harold A. Trinkunas
Naval Postgraduate School
Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Conflict, and the Chávez Phe-

nomenon. By Steve Ellner. Boulder, CO: Lynne Reiner Publishers, 2008.
Pp. xiv + 257. $55.00 cloth.
Dictatorship and Politics: Intrigue: Betrayal, and Survival in Venezu-
ela, 1908–1935. By Brian Stuart McBeth. Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 578. $60.00 cloth.
The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela. By Miguel
Tinker Salas. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009. Pp. xvi + 234.
$23.95 paper. $84.95 cloth.
For all the talk of revolution in Venezuela today, it is the twentieth cen-
tury that witnessed the most profound transformation in the country’s
state and society. Prior to the advent to power of Juan Vicente Gómez in
1908, Venezuela mirrored many of its neighbors in the Latin Caribbean: it
had an agricultural economy with few substantial exports, a profoundly
divided society in which regional and local attachments (la patria chica) had
pride of place, and a political arena in which violence frequently settled
disputes. By the time Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999, Venezuela had
transformed into a modern country with all its strengths and weaknesses: a
rentier state, a democratic polity, and a modern and cosmopolitan society.
Particularly during the past decade, scholarship on Venezuelan poli-
tics has flourished. The phenomena of Chavismo and President Chávez
in power have spawned numerous academic studies and a veritable in-
dustry of books aimed at a general audience.1 The polarization evident in
Venezuelan politics today has, on occasion, spilled over into scholarship.
The rentier economy, the hypercentralized but highly inefficient state, the
1. Although Richard Gott’s In the Shadow of the Liberator (London: Verso, 2000) marked the
beginning of this genre, books for a general audience on Hugo Chávez have continued to
appear at a rather steady clip throughout the past decade.
The contents of this article are solely the responsibility of the author, and they do not rep-
resent the views of the Naval Postgraduate School or the U.S. Navy. I would like to thank
Elisabeth Friedman and Francisco Monaldi for commenting on earlier drafts of this review.
Any remaining errors are entirely attributable to the author.
P5331.indb 239 10/15/10 1:54:11 PM

primacy of populist politics, and the success or decline of democracy have

all been examined at length, generating acrimonious and contentious
debate as to whether things are getting better or worse. However, not all
that many scholars have reached back to connect Venezuela’s evolution
during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to present-day politics un-
der Chávez. In other words, where does the Venezuela we see today come
from? What does this tell us about where it might go?
The three well-researched books by Brian McBeth, Miguel Tinker Sa-
las, and Steve Ellner allow for an understanding of the deep roots of the
transformations that produced the state and society today in Venezuela.
McBeth helps us understand how Gómez retained power long enough to
create a modern state between 1908 and 1935, a state able to pacify politics,
maintain sovereignty, and set in motion oil-led development that eventu-
ally produced a rentier state. Tinker Salas looks closely at how oil produc-
tion transformed society, thus influencing the creation of a modern mid-
dle class in Venezuela. Ellner connects the dots between the emergence
of modern politics following the death of Gómez in 1935, a politics based
on class interests (which multiclass parties later tamed between 1958 and
1998), the crisis of the party system that brought Chávez to power in 1999,
and today’s debates about the future direction of Chavismo.
STATE FORMATION IN VENEZUELA
The period during which Juan Vicente Gómez governed (1908–1935) is

frequently treated as an undifferentiated black box of barbarity in most
popular accounts of Venezuelan history. Yet, as McBeth documents, it was
actually crucial to the formation of the Venezuelan state. Gómez, a coffee
farmer from the Andes, came to Caracas as part of the Revolución Lib-
eral Restauradora, led by Cipriano Castro in 1899. After Castro’s tumultu-
ous period of rule, Gómez quietly arranged to depose him and assumed
power for the next twenty-seven years. He governed with the help of a se-
cret police of unparalleled brutality, and in many ways, he ran Venezuela
as a personal plantation, accumulating one of the largest fortunes in South
America at the time of his death. His motto was “Unión, Paz, y Trabajo,”
which was apocryphally interpreted as “unión en las cárceles, trabajo en
las carreteras, y paz en el cementerio,” given the number of political pris-
oners incarcerated and forced to work on the national highway system,
frequently under conditions leading to their early death.
The black legend of Gómez’s dictatorship has come under fire by his-
torians for some time, and a number of fine revisionist studies have been
published, of which McBeth’s is the latest.2 It is not hard to understand
2. A number of histories written in Venezuela reexamine Gómez’s rule with an eye to

developing a more accurate account. Although not an exhaustive list, these include the
P5331.indb 240 10/15/10 1:54:11 PM

THE TRANSFORMATION OF VENEZUELA 241
why such a legend came about, given the ruthlessness of the regime. As
Ellner notes in his very thorough review, it was politically useful for the
democratizers that followed to construct this black legend so as to then dif-
ferentiate themselves. By casting aspersions on Gómez, the democratizers
justified some of their own excesses while highlighting their successes.
McBeth digs deep into the sources of the political turmoil that charac-
terized Gómez’s rule, using extensive archival sources and interviews to
build an astonishingly detailed picture of the period.
McBeth brings into sharp relief the fragility of Venezuela as a nation
when Gómez assumed power. Several major European powers had block-
aded the country, and it was highly indebted to foreigners, fragmented
by regional and political rivalries, and prone to civil war and economic
crises. The government lived from hand to mouth, wholly dependent on
customs revenues and frequently in default on its debts under Castro. Af-
ter becoming president, Gómez was constantly under assault by rebel-
lions and coup plots, to such an extent that it would be all too easy for a
nonspecialist to lose track of these problems because of the sheer number
of conspiratorial movements that McBeth has documented. In addition,
foreign powers often considered removing General Gómez from power
during his first decade in office.
By the time of his death in 1935, Gómez had changed all this. Venezuela
had no foreign debt, had successfully negotiated and developed one of
the largest oil industries in the Western Hemisphere, and had expanded
agricultural and educational opportunities. In addition, Gómez had de-
militarized the population by defeating regional caudillos, had formed a
modern national army, and had established the kernel of a modern state
bureaucracy. Although not always emphasized, the campaign of depoliti-
cization by repression also wiped out the traditional Liberal and Conser-
vative parties, opening the way for a new system influenced by European
ideologies such as socialism and Christian democracy.3
The foundation Gómez established had its flaws. A nearly inescap-
able consequence of oil dominance was the rentier state.4 This, in turn,
following: Germán Carrera Damas, Jornadas de historia crítica: La evasora personalidad de Juan
Vicente Gómez y otros temas (Caracas: Universidad Central de Venezuela, Ediciones de la
Biblioteca, 1983); Yolanda Segnini, La consolidación del régimen de Juan Vicente Gómez (Cara-
cas: Academia Nacional de Historia, 1982); Tomás Polanco Alcantara, Juan Vicente Gómez:
Aproximación a una biografía (Caracas: Academia Nacional de Historia, 1990); Francisco Car-
reño Delgado, El benemérito: Un bellaco admirable (Caracas: Editorial Texto, 1987); Manuel
Caballero, Gómez, El tirano liberal (Caracas: Monte Ávila, 1994).
3. For a fine overview of state formation in Venezuela, see Doug Yarrington, “Cattle,
Corruption and Venezuelan State Formation during the Regime of Juan Vicente Gómez,
1908–1935,” Latin American Research Review 38, no. 2 (2003): 9–33.
4. See Terry Lynn Karl, The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petrostates (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 1997).
P5331.indb 241 10/15/10 1:54:12 PM

supported the hypercentralization of the state in Caracas, the primacy of

the presidency over other branches of government, and thoroughgoing
corruption in the exercise of state power. A cynic might observe that Ven-
ezuela’s fundamental problem since that time has been how to coordinate
the transfer of state oil revenues into private hands while avoiding politi-
cal violence. Ellner provides considerable insight into the various political
mechanisms used to unravel this Gordian knot.
TRANSFORMATION OF VENEZUELAN SOCIETY
Although Venezuela prided itself on being semiofficially color blind

during much of the twentieth century, it had inherited difficult racial and
ethnic divisions from the time of its independence, including a history
of mistreating indigenous peoples and the enslavement of Venezuelans
of African descent. To this, we can add the class distinctions that sprang
up and became accentuated when oil catapulted Venezuelan society (or at
least some parts of it) into modernity. The major political parties of the so-
called Fourth Republic (1958–1998)—Acción Democrática (AD) and Comité
de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI)—hewed to the
semiofficial mythology of a racially integrated society and advocated
multiclass parties precisely because they had discovered during the
Trienio (the three-year period of AD rule between 1945 and 1948) just how
volatile and dangerous it could be to mobilize race and class tensions in
Venezuela.
President Chávez departed from this political consensus quite dra-
matically after 1999. With explicit appeals to poor and working-class Ven-
ezuelans, his political campaigns revisited what the traditional elites had
considered dangerous ground. He also highlighted, along class lines, the
African and indigenous roots of Venezuelan culture to an extent unpar-
alleled by politicians of the previous democratic period. This approach
has prompted a good deal of new debate on the issue of race and class in
Venezuela.5
Tinker Salas explores the deep roots of race, class, and gender dynamics
in modern Venezuela through the lens of the oil industry. His upbringing
in and near the oil camps that dominated the exploitation and production
of crude in Venezuela shapes his interest.6 He argues that, by bringing
new technology, personnel, and modes of organization to bear, inter-
national oil companies transformed the landscapes of the cities, towns,
and immediate environs of the oil fields through informal, unplanned
construction and rapid oil-focused infrastructure development. The im-
6. Ibid.
P5331.indb 242 10/15/10 1:54:12 PM

pact of oil completely overwhelmed cities and small towns, particularly

in the state of Zulia, as newcomers placed unprecedented demands on
largely traditional societies.
Tinker Salas argues that the approaches and techniques of foreign
oil workers and managers produced an increasingly stratified society in
these areas, beginning in the 1920s. In particular, the attitudes of the many
workers recruited from Texas and Oklahoma influenced society and gov-
ernance in the oil camps, affecting not only labor but also gender and race
relations. As the camps developed, companies increasingly encouraged
expatriates to move their families to the compounds to stabilize them.
This added another dimension to the social and cultural tensions between
Venezuelans and foreign workers. In addition, the desire for skilled and
semiskilled English-speaking labor created a demand for immigrants
from the British Caribbean. The inclusion of foreigners of South Asian
and African descent added yet another layer of social tension to the camp
hierarchy and Venezuelan society more generally.
This is not to say that Venezuelans opposed the jobs that grew out of
the oil industry. They flocked in large numbers to the main production
centers (initially mostly in Zulia and Falcón in western Venezuela), which
completely transformed local societies and brought together Venezuelans
from different regional backgrounds in a manner without precedent, prob-
ably since the wars of independence. Tinker Salas argues that Venezuelan
workers resented the social and labor hierarchy that the camps produced,
and this provided fertile grounds for a labor movement that later came
to have significant influence on national labor relations. The contrast be-
tween the highly regimented, organized, and groomed life in the camps
(which resembled small suburban enclaves in the United States) and the
relatively informal communities surrounding them is a consistent theme
in the book, one that ultimately helped drive the evolution of Venezuelan
attitudes toward foreign oil companies.
Tinker Salas suggests that the values that international oil companies
(mainly from the United States) communicated to Venezuelans in the in-
dustry came to be embedded in the middle class and persisted in the or-
ganizational culture of the industry after nationalization. In particular,
in reaction to the early nationalization of oil in Mexico in 1938, foreign oil
companies pursued a policy of venezolanización that brought local work-
ers, managers, and professionals into higher and higher levels of respon-
sibility within the industry. Tinker Salas tells a fascinating story of the
great lengths to which the oil industry went to foster middle-class values
among its workers, encouraging home ownership, education, punctual-
ity, and hard work as a way to fend off nationalization or, worse (from
the companies’ perspective), communism. Tinker Salas shows how Ven-
ezuelan professionals and workers absorbed the foreign values associated
with the oil industry, even as they continued to experience a social gulf
P5331.indb 243 10/15/10 1:54:12 PM

between themselves and the largely American and British expatriates who
still populated the upper levels of management in the 1950s and 1960s. He
suggests that these values carried forward into the industry after nation-
alization, influencing the formation of a state within the state.
Foreign oil companies also carefully tracked local politics beyond the
boundaries of their industry, sometimes intervening to fend off what they
perceived as extreme movements but more frequently reaching arrange-
ments with whatever regime held power. This came to mean a persistent
campaign to influence public opinion through the media and propaganda.
Some efforts were quite inventive, but it is not clear from Tinker Salas’s
study how much effect they actually had on the broader population. Nev-
ertheless, they persistently pushed the message that oil companies (and
their objectives) were good for Venezuela. As Tinker Salas documents,
many employees of the oil industry came to believe this as well.
These arguments start to fall flat when Tinker Salas stretches his find-
ings to claim that foreign oil companies also shaped the values of a broad
range of Venezuelans, particularly in the middle class. This claim should
be treated carefully because, even at its peak in 1948, the industry em-
ployed only 4.5 percent of the labor force. Other sources claim a somewhat
lower 3.5 percent of the economically active population was involved in
the industry, and both figures declined quite rapidly in the following
decade.7 The rapid urbanization of Venezuela made possible by oil rents
surely had a greater role in the formation of a middle class, yet any effects
foreign oil companies might have had on this process were quite indirect.
In addition, the contrasts in wealth and social status that oil camps pro-
duced were generally experienced only in the states of Zulia and Falcón
(and later Monagas) during this period. The contrast between popular
barrios and middle-class urbanizations in major cities (where the oil in-
dustry employed very few on either side of the divide) was much more
likely to affect politics on a broad national scale than exposure to the ways
of foreign oil companies.
In addition, although Tinker Salas makes a strong argument for the ef-
fect of foreign oil companies on their employees, the gamut of influences
bearing at the same time on the broader middle class is remarkable. In
addition to the values that newly urbanized Venezuelans brought from
their home districts to cities, large-scale immigration, including hundreds
of thousands of skilled workers, also contributed to the development of
the middle class. The new residents from abroad included Republican
refugees from the Spanish Civil War; other Europeans escaping war, re-
pression, and economic hardship during and after the Second World War;
immigrants from the Levant attracted by economic opportunities and the
P5331.indb 244 10/15/10 1:54:12 PM

absence of violent conflict; those politically persecuted by Southern Cone

dictatorships in the 1960s and 1970s who escaped to one of a few stable de-
mocracies in Latin America; and others from across the globe in search of
a better standard of living.8 To suggest that foreign oil companies, largely
from the United States, were predominant in shaping the values of the
middle class may be one of the few cases in which one can overstate the
oil industry’s impact on Venezuela.
THE TRANSFORMATION OF VENEZUELAN POLITICS
Beginning with the 1928 student movement that Gómez thoroughly

repressed, a new generation of politicians unaffiliated with the traditional
Liberal and Conservative parties began to organize to take power. Gómez’s
heirs, military officers originating in the Andean region, managed to hold
on to power through 1958, albeit with a brief interlude of democratiza-
tion in 1945–1948. A central problem with which both the armed forces
and democratizers had to struggle was how to administer increasing oil
revenues, which flowed to the state through relatively little effort of its
own. The struggle to balance investment against distribution, particularly
distribution through legal channels aimed to alleviate societal concerns,
indeed marks Venezuelan politics.
Although he claims to bring socioeconomic factors back in, Ellner actu-
ally showcases his grasp of the role of political actors in the transforma-
tion of Venezuelan politics in the twentieth century. Building on his earlier
work critiquing notions of Venezuelan exceptionalism, Ellner reminds us
of the social and political struggles underpinning the evolution of a mod-
ern party system in Venezuela, its eventual crisis during the 1990s, and
its collapse under Chávez. The first four chapters of Rethinking Venezuelan
Politics offer an especially useful and nuanced critique of traditional ap-
proaches to understanding twentieth-century Venezuelan politics.
Clearly, the socioeconomic factors that Ellner tries to bring back in are
the class tensions that have arisen from the persistent exclusion from poli-
tics and society of substantial numbers of Venezuelans, particularly of the
lowest classes. Although AD and COPEI (the dominant parties of the post-
Gómez period) both had populist wings genuinely concerned with so-
cial reform and justice, most twentieth-century Venezuelan governments
were able to reduce poverty only during boom times associated with high
oil prices. The sheer volume of money sloshing through the system inevi-
tably created an economic tide that floated all boats, though not for very
long in many cases. After the boom times receded, the underlying class
tension between the barrios and middle- and upper-class urbanizaciones
P5331.indb 245 10/15/10 1:54:12 PM

was never very far away, as the 1989 urban revolt known as the Caracazo
reminded Venezuela and its observers.
Ellner documents President Chávez’s evolution in power, from his first
electoral victory to his proclamation of twenty-first century socialism.
Chávez promised to address the socioeconomic divide and, unlike politi-
cians of the previous four decades, he definitely picked a side. This return
to a more populist and partisan approach has worked to keep Chávez
in power, allowing him to win most elections and survive a coup, a gen-
eral strike, and a recall referendum. After a decade in power, it is only
fair to review the political and ideological underpinnings of the Chavista
movement, especially because it advertises itself in explicitly ideological
terms such as bolivarianismo and twenty-first century socialism. Ellner has a
fine ear for the dialogue of the broad array of groups, parties, movements,
and cliques that make up Chavismo. He notes the tensions between ef-
forts to improve democratic participation by independents and grassroots
supporters of Chavismo, and the compulsion to “follow the leader” and
defend vertical lines of authority by the Chavista leadership. Some schol-
ars suggest that it may oversimplify the internal debate within Chavismo
during the past decade to identify the grass roots with a softer line and the
movement’s elites with a political hard line. However, the general point
that there has been an effort to improve participation through bottom-up
social mobilization and inclusion, particularly among the traditionally
disenfranchised in Venezuela, is well taken. Although Ellner emphasizes
this less, there is also a clear authoritarian bent in key sectors of Chavismo,
and those sectors are willing to defend some very undemocratic practices
(even in the area of elections) in their effort to retain power.9
Despite his focus on socioeconomic factors, Ellner does less well in in-
corporating recent debates about the impact of oil rents on government
performance and the alleviation of poverty. Chávez has been fortunate
in that, since 2003, Venezuela has experienced one of its great oil booms.
This has allowed the state to paper over most problems with money. It
is still under debate whether the various social programs created by
President Chávez have worked, and it is very much in doubt whether they
are sustainable in the absence of oil-fueled state largesse.10 However, it
is clear that Venezuela’s success in alleviating poverty and reducing in-
equality has mostly occurred during oil booms, regardless of the orienta-
tion of the government in power.11 Conversely, that the drying up of oil
rents fuels political crises is well supported by evidence, but this does not
play a very significant role in Ellner’s analyses of such crises outside of
his discussion of Carlos Andrés Pérez’s second government, which began
in 1989.
P5331.indb 246 10/15/10 1:54:13 PM

By not addressing the less democratic elements of Chavismo and the

continuing inefficacy and inefficiency of government programs, Ellner
avoids taking his argument to its logical conclusion. It is true that the fre-
quently venomous debate in the media and society as to how authoritarian
President Chávez is, and as to how effective government programs have
been during his administration, make difficult a sensible study of the sub-
ject. However, there is a strange disconnect in Ellner’s work between the
ideological underpinnings of Chavismo, on the one hand, and how the
country really functions, on the other hand. After a decade spent observ-
ing Chavismo, it is not clear to me that concepts such as participatory de-
mocracy and twenty-first-century socialism explain very much about how
decisions are made in Venezuela. Ellner’s book could have pushed further
by delineating those areas in which ideological debate actually matters for
outcomes and those areas where traditional power politics trumps all.
CONCLUSION
Each of the books reviewed here examines an important but under-

studied piece of Venezuela’s recent history. Each in its own way also con-
tributes to the well-established critique of Venezuelan exceptionalism in
academic studies.12 McBeth’s close study of Gómez’s rule (1908–1935) helps
us understand the process that transformed Venezuela from a vulnerable
country with chaotic domestic politics into a modernizing state, integrated
into the world economy through its role in international energy markets.
Tinker Salas’s well-researched book helps us understand the role that oil
played in shaping class, race, and gender relations in the twentieth century,
particularly in the oil industry. Ellner provides a thorough review of the
evolution of Venezuelan politics to the present day, together with a serious
examination of the state of play in ideological debates within Chavismo.
Although the books are all well worth reading, they are not without
flaws. McBeth’s volume is written for specialists in Venezuelan history and
would benefit from a more thorough introduction. Without an overview of
the historical context that Gómez faced when he came to power, it is easy
to miss just how important his rule was for state formation in Venezuela.
Tinker Salas offers excellent fieldwork and analysis, although some may
find that his disciplinary jargon occasionally gets in the way of a fascinat-
ing story. He also overreaches somewhat in attempting to connect the oil
industry’s efforts to shape its employees’ values to the contentious politics
of Venezuela today, if only because so many other factors also affect the
formation of the middle class. Finally, Ellner falls short of connecting his
very nuanced understanding of the ideological debate within Chavismo
to a sense of how this debate actually influences practices, particularly in
those spheres of politics in which all that truly matters is what President
Chávez says.
P5331.indb 247 10/15/10 1:54:13 PM

B O L I V I A I N T H E E R A O F E VO M O R A L E S
Jeffery R. Webber
University of Regina
Unresolved Tensions: Bolivia Past and Present. Edited by John Crabtree

and Laurence Whitehead. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,
2008. Pp. ix + 309. $65.00 cloth.
Los ritmos del Pachakuti: Movilización y levantamiento indígena-
popular en Bolivia (2000–2005). By Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar. La Paz:
Ediciones Yachaywasi and Textos Rebeldes, 2008. Pp. 335. Paper.
Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics. By For-
rest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson. London: Verso, 2007. Pp. xxiv + 177.
$22.95 paper.
El poder del movimiento político: Estrategia, tramas organizativas e
identidad del MAS en Cochabamba (1999–2005). By Jorge Komadina
and Céline Geffroy. La Paz: Centro de Estudios Superiores Universi-
tarios and Dirección de Investigación Científica y Técnica, Universidad
Mayor de San Simón, and Fundación para la Investigación Estratégica
en Bolivia, 2007. Pp. xvi + 156. Paper.
Reinventando la nación en Bolivia: Movimientos sociales, estado y
poscolonialidad. Edited by Karin Monasterios, Pablo Stefanoni, and
Hervé Do Alto. La Paz: Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales,
Plural Editores, 2007. Pp. 171. Paper.
In his magnum opus, Europe and the People without History (1982), Eric R.
Wolf drew on Marxian categories to explain how the acceleration of capi-
talist development in eighteenth-century England amplified pressures
against the ruling class and the state that did its bidding, as new laboring
classes came into being and struggled for their rights.1 In this context,
Wolf asserts: “The specter of disorder and revolution raised the question
of how social order could be restored and maintained, indeed, how social
1. Throughout this essay, the term social movement refers to “those sequences of conten-
tious politics that are based on underlying social networks and resonant collective action
frames, and which develop the capacity to maintain sustained challenges against powerful
opponents.” See Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 2
P5331.indb 248 10/15/10 1:54:13 PM

BOLIVIA IN THE ERA OF EVO MORALES 249
order was possible at all.”2 In another classic text of a rather different ideo-
logical persuasion, Samuel Huntington fetishized the problem of political
order in the modernizing third-world societies of the 1960s, stressing the
dangers of excessive political participation in so-called praetorian states.
“In a praetorian system,” Huntington suggests, “social forces confront
each other nakedly; no political institutions, no corps of professional po-
litical leaders are recognized or accepted as the legitimate intermediaries
to moderate group conflict. . . . The wealthy bribe; students riot; workers
strike; mobs demonstrate; and the military coup.”3
It is hardly surprising that in the context of effervescing social
movements—or “mass praetorianism,” in Huntingtonian language—the
central concerns of mainstream sociologists and political scientists writ-
ing about Bolivia during the past number of years has been the specter of
revolution and the concomitant need to contain the rebels from below and
reestablish order from above. A five-year period of left-indigenous revolt
began in 2000 with the Cochabamba Water War against privatization in
that city. This was followed by the 2003 and 2005 Gas Wars, whose pro-
tagonists called for, among other things, nationalization of the hydrocar-
bons industry. The insurgents successfully overthrew President Gonzalo
Sánchez de Lozada, and later Carlos Mesa, when their demands were not
met. These protests set the stage, of course, for the electoral victory of Evo
Morales, leader of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS; Movement toward
Socialism), in the December 2005 general elections.
For those radical scholars who saw neoliberal rule in Bolivia during the
1980s and 1990s as fundamentally premised on racialized class injustice,
these rebellions raised different concerns from those of the mainstream,
leading these scholars to ask how such discontent might be channeled into
a full-fledged transformation of Bolivia’s social and political structures to
meet the interests of the indigenous, proletarian, and peasant majority.4
The books under consideration here reflect how intellectual debate
on the Bolivian scene has polarized in step with political realities on the
ground. These texts can usefully be situated on an order-to-insurrection
continuum, beginning with what I would term the guardians of order, fol-
lowed by masista loyalists, and finally the critical left. These are blurry rather
than discrete categories, of course, with authors at times bridging the
divides.
2. Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People without History (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1997), 8.
3. Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, CT: Yale Uni-
versity Press, 1968), 196.
4. See Jeffery R. Webber, Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (Leiden:
Brill Academic Publishers, 2010).
P5331.indb 249 10/15/10 1:54:13 PM

THE GUARDIANS OF ORDER
The collection of essays edited by John Crabtree and Laurence White-

head emerged out of a pair of conferences held in Oxford and La Paz in
2006 and 2007. Unresolved Tensions centers on issues of ethnicity, regional-
ism, state-society relations, constitutional reform, economic development,
and globalization. Seemingly rushed into print (typographical errors and
awkward translations abound), it is an uneven and unsatisfactory attempt
at a panoramic perspective on the opening phase of Morales’s rule, os-
tensibly from a wide range of theoretical and ideological vantage points.
But although Whitehead assures the reader that the collection is “not de-
signed to promote any one particular standpoint” and that the editors
are “sympathetic but uncommitted outsiders” (255), the deliberately cir-
cumscribed range of debate on offer belies the pretense of objectivity and
passive neutrality.
The contributions are decisively weighted toward liberal and conser-
vative perspectives on Morales’s administration and broader questions
of Bolivian historiography, politics, society, and economy. Of fourteen
substantive chapters (excluding the brief introduction but including the
conclusion), there are but four exceptions: Xavier Albó’s thoughtful an-
thropological study of the long memory of ethnicity; Rossana Barragán’s
institutionalist-historical overview of the central state’s collection and dis-
tribution of fiscal revenues to distinct regions since the founding of the
republic; Carlos Arze’s brief Marxist account of economic and social de-
velopments under neoliberal globalization; and Luis Tapia’s sophisticated,
critical, and masista overview of constituent versus constituted power un-
der Morales. For the sake of brevity, I focus on the volume’s overarching
thrust, which is defined not by these exceptions but by the other analyses
by liberal and conservative guardians of order.
The chapter by José Luis Roca provides one helpful entry into this mo-
rass by arguing the astonishingly reductionist thesis that regional conflict
in Bolivia has, as a rule, subsumed class and ethnic tensions and con-
tinues to define the central axis of division in the country to this day. In
proposing, as a solution and in opposition to the alleged centralism of
La Paz, that autonomous powers should devolve to each of Bolivia’s nine
departments, Roca aligns himself ideologically with conservative autono-
mists of the eastern lowlands, or media luna—particularly those of its lead-
ing edge, the elite of the department of Santa Cruz. This scheme, which
Roca had presented in greater detail in Fisonomía del regionalismo boliviano,
would purportedly decentralize political power and perhaps ensure Bo-
livia’s viability as a single country.5 However, it also willfully obfuscates
5. José Luis Roca, Fisonomía del regionalismo boliviano (La Paz: Editorial Los Magos del
Libro, 1980).
P5331.indb 250 10/15/10 1:54:14 PM

the massive concentration of natural gas, agro-industrial landholdings,

and industrial and financial capital in the departments of Santa Cruz and
Tarija, at the expense of other regions. In opposition to what Roca con-
tends, Bolivia’s main popular movements call for a radical redistribution
of wealth down the social hierarchy along geographical, ethnic, and class
lines. Whatever their rhetoric, demands for autonomy emanating from the
eastern lowlands reflect a political campaign to destabilize, and thus halt,
each and every modest step by Morales’s government toward the end of
redistributing wealth.6
Elsewhere, Roca follows the notoriously racist novel Pueblo enfermo
(1909), by the historian Alcides Arguedas, in lamenting “the obstinacy
of the Aymaras of La Paz” (18). The largely Aymara and Quechua pop-
ulations of the western departments are, for Roca, “strongly influenced
by traditionalism” and therefore desire a retrogressive “return to pre-
Hispanic societal modes across Bolivia” (74). Roca’s chosen people of the
media luna, by contrast, are refreshingly modern, broadly supporting
“neocapitalist development and market economics” (74).
Franz Xavier Barrios Suvelza’s chapter on Bolivia’s state-society nexus
stands out for its Huntingtonian view that a dangerously praetorian Bo-
livia faces the danger of overpoliticization under Morales: “the current
process of change in Bolivia involves a tendency . . . to reshape the style of
the state in the direction of an unbounded and unconstrained democracy,
one lacking restraint on the passions—what we might call in Stoic terms
a pathetic state,” that is, “a style of state where democratic and politicized
forces have come to permeate the state” (125). The increasing involvement
of popular classes in democratic politics is the specter, and for Barrios
Suvelza, the solution is the reassertion of the “apolitical” and “a-demo-
cratic” realms of the state (125). We are to recoil in horror from “[t]he way
in which democracy has overflowed into the decision-making sphere”
under Morales “to the detriment of a-democratic and apolitical state func-
tions” (133).
Liberal guardians of order tend to a more realistic account of the re-
forms Morales has actually implemented, as distinct from his radical
sophistry. Unlike conservative critics, they are predisposed to accept the
existence of his regime, as there is no viable right-wing alternative and
the regime continues to chart a path of moderation. Morales may even be
a stabilizing force for good in their eyes. “In recent years,” writes George
Gray Molina, head of the UN Development Program (UNDP) in Bolivia,
“much attention has shifted to the relative strength of social movements
and the weakening of traditional political parties, democratic institutions,
6. See, among other sources, Mark Weisbrot and Luis Sandoval, The Distribution of Bo-
livia’s Most Important Natural Resources and the Autonomy Conflicts (Washington, D.C.: Center
for Economic and Policy Research, 2008).
P5331.indb 251 10/15/10 1:54:14 PM

and the rule of law, among other dimensions of the state-society balance”
(109). He cites a UNDP survey published in 2007 that found that “Bolivians
feel that laws are not enforced, because most feel that ‘laws are unjust’ and
that ‘unjust laws may be broken.’” As well, “Bolivian public opinion has
identified the worst transgressors as ‘the rich’ and ‘politicians’” and “most
Bolivians continue to advocate ‘universal’ enforcement of laws while at the
same time reserving the right to transgress, protest, overturn law” (120).
For Gray Molina and other liberals, these are worrying trends and the
priority of the day should be to construct a modus vivendi, or institutional
apparatus, of state-society relations able to dampen the rising tide of radi-
cal discontent and to make cosmetic changes to the status quo without al-
tering its socioeconomic foundations. To this end, the best bet for liberals
might be to hazard some “institutional pluralism,” allowing “state holes”
or “places where bureaucratic or legal state presence is tenuous . . . where
authority, legitimacy, and sovereignty are continuously contested” (113)
by unions, indigenous communities, and social movements, so long as the
latter are ultimately contained and liberal capitalist rule is not threatened
at its core. By and large, Gray Molina concludes, state-society relations
under Morales reflect this objective in many ways and, indeed, present
continuities with the neoliberal model.
MASISTA SCHOLARS
Despite a flurry of publications in the wake of Morales’s election, there

is as yet no theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich, comprehensive
account of the social origins and political trajectory of MAS. Suggestive
journalistic monographs and articles by investigators sympathetic to MAS
have appeared,7 as have descriptive texts of the relations between social
movements and the state under Morales.8 Despite important empirical in-
sights, these works tend to lack historical and theoretical depth, and they
often uncritically parrot official dispatches from the party. At best, they
offer only a partial picture of the present.
Unfortunately, Jorge Komadina and Céline Geffroy’s El poder del mo-
vimiento politico does not escape these tendencies, instead continuing the
tradition of impressionistic and partial analysis. Although it makes fre-
quent claims about the overarching course and significance of MAS’s de-
7. The most important of these works are Pablo Stefanoni and Hervé Do Alto, Evo Morales:
De la coca al palacio: Una oportunidad para la izquierda indígena (La Paz: Malatesta, 2006); Shir-
ley Orozco Ramírez, “Historia del Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS): Trayectoria política e
ideológica,” Barataria 1, no. 2 (2004): 16–22; Pablo Stefanoni, “MAS-IPSP: La emergencia del
nacionalismo plebeya,” Observatorio Social de América Latina 4, no. 12 (2003): 57–68.
8. María Teresa Zegada, Yuri F. Tórrez, and Gloria Cámara, Movimientos sociales en tiem-
pos de poder: Articulaciones y campos de conflicto en el gobierno del MAS (La Paz: Plural Editores,
2008).
P5331.indb 252 10/15/10 1:54:14 PM

velopment, the study is circumscribed geographically to the department

of Cochabamba and temporally to the period between 1999 and 2005.
The theoretical framework presented at the outset of the book is a de-
rivative combination of European new social movement theory (Alberto
Melucci, Alain Touraine, Chantal Mouffe, Ernesto Laclau), French post-
structuralism (Michel Foucault), and American liberal institutionalism
(Charles Tilly, Sidney Tarrow). Though cited, these influences are often
not integrated into the authors’ analysis, breaking its flow while adding
nothing by way of insight. The political-economic backdrop of neoliberal
crisis and its role in fostering left-indigenous movements and MAS itself
is mainly absent, with not a single reference to the voluminous literature
by economists and sociologists at the La Paz–based Centro de Estudios
para el Desarrollo Laboral y Agrario (CEDLA), for example. The treatment
of opposing analytical viewpoints frequently descends into caricature, as
in the discussion of Marxism in chapter 1. As well, descriptions of well-
known phenomena and concepts such as political movement (as distinct
from political party and social movement) are presented as major theo-
retical breakthroughs. Nonetheless, the book is rooted in an impressive
array of interviews, ranging from rank-and-file members of the party to
officials in its highest institutional echelons. Important empirical data can
therefore be gleaned from a careful reading of the book, despite its theo-
retical shortcomings.
Komadina and Geffroy begin by opposing their analysis to that of or-
thodox Marxists (who characterize MAS as reformist rather than revolu-
tionary socialist), to that of liberals and conservatives (who label MAS as
populist in a pejorative sense), and to that of autonomist Marxists (who
portray MAS as closer to a social movement than a political party). In
what follows, they examine the strategic and tactical orientation of MAS
in relation to formal electoral politics and street protests during the past
decade. A principal thesis is that the 2002 general elections were a turning
point, shifting the party from extraparliamentary, insurrectionary change
to electoral politics. To the surprise of everyone, Morales came a very close
second to Sánchez de Lozada in those elections, making success at the
national level increasingly plausible. The party began, therefore, to court
the urban middle class, moderating its anti-neoliberal rhetoric in an effort
to secure victory in the next scheduled elections of 2007.
However, MAS certainly did not abandon extraparliamentary activ-
ism altogether, lest it lose its social base in increasingly radical and well-
organized popular sectors. As Komadina and Geffroy correctly point out,
when MAS militants took to the streets in the 2003 and 2005 Gas Wars,
party leaders offered support strategically, distancing themselves at all
times from the more radical sectors; privileging negotiated constitutional
solutions to state crises rather than mass insurrection; and moderating the
demands emanating from social activists, especially those calling for a
P5331.indb 253 10/15/10 1:54:14 PM

constituent assembly and full nationalization of the hydrocarbons (natu-

ral gas and oil) industry. As in much liberal institutionalist literature on
the formation of ethnic parties in Latin America, the descriptive account
of MAS’s origins emphasizes the opportunities opened by institutional
changes to municipal politics under the Popular Participation Law of 1994
and by the rapid decline in legitimacy of traditional political parties over
the late 1990s and early 2000s. Once again, the socioeconomic crisis en-
gendered by neoliberalism, arguably the most important single cause of
the latter parties’ collapse, is hardly addressed. Instead, the authors stress
MAS’s origins in the coca growers’ movement in the Chapare region of
the department of Cochabamba and the ongoing effects of those ties on
MAS’s structure. The party’s procedures and its formal and informal in-
stitutions are never clearly depicted. More important, we learn nothing
about its changing class composition over time. The party’s relationships
to urban unions, movements of the urban poor, and popular community
struggles go virtually unexamined. The city is implicitly treated as a
relatively homogeneous middle-class domain, distinct from the peasant-
dominated countryside. As a result, the shift in party strategy beginning
in 2002 becomes yet one more technical policy choice rather than the po-
litical expression of the urban and rural middle class’s growing influence
over the party’s highest officers and leaders.
In summary, Komadina and Geffroy are sympathetic to the moderately
reformist trajectory of MAS in the early 2000s and hostile to those whom
they characterize as orthodox Marxist and right-wing critics of the party.
The book’s strength lies in the extensive empirical data gathered through
serious field research on the political origins and ideological trajectory
of MAS in the department of Cochabamba between the late 1990s and
the December 2005 elections. However, readers interested in theoretical
sophistication and the wider historical significance of MAS for Bolivian
politics as a whole will need to look elsewhere.
Ideologically similar but much richer analytically is the collection of
essays edited by Karin Monasterios, Pablo Stefanoni, and Hervé Do Alto.
With a limited grounding in the close observation of reality, Mario Bla-
ser’s introduction misconstrues Bolivia’s current struggle as one with
modernity itself. But the volume quickly improves with Stefanoni’s dis-
cussion of domestic and foreign right-wing mythologies created to dele-
gitimize the Morales administration. An Argentinean sociologist and
journalist who has resided in La Paz for a number of years, and has an
intimate appreciation of political dynamics both within and outside the
presidential palace during Morales’s ascent to office, Stefanoni begins by
soundly demolishing the absurd—but nonetheless recurrent—assertion
by the Bolivian right that Morales’s government practices reverse racism
by excluding whites and mestizos from formal and informal spheres of
political power. With more patience than many could muster, Stefanoni
P5331.indb 254 10/15/10 1:54:14 PM

undoes this accusation with a systematic accounting of the ethnic and

political diversity of Morales’s first cabinet in 2006. He also demonstrates
why we ought to dismiss as conspiratorial drivel the popular notion that
Hugo Chávez was behind the rise of left-indigenous social movements in
Bolivia since 2000 and now effectively controls the Morales government
from behind the scenes.
Shifting gears in an effort to soothe the anxieties of the liberal right,
Stefanoni also takes on the question of whether MAS is in fact “a govern-
ment of social movements” (29), as its official discourse suggests. He points
out that, although the executive and legislative powers symbolically pay
more attention to indigenous movements, their access to key ministries—
especially those directly relating to the economy—has been completely
restricted. Strikes by teachers and doctors were declared illegal during
Morales’s first year in office, public-sector workers received miniscule sal-
ary increases in 2006 and 2007, and the party has practiced strict fiscal
discipline in its macroeconomic operations. Nonetheless, Stefanoni sees
Morales’s rise as embodying a post-neoliberal turn. In this respect, like
Komadina and Geffroy, he is hostile to Marxist criticism of the Morales re-
gime. He treats uncritically the government’s claim that it nationalized the
hydrocarbons industry in 2006, despite ample evidence to the contrary.9
Stefanoni is in the main sympathetic to Vice President Álvaro García Lin-
era’s characterization of MAS’s economic project as Andean-Amazonian
capitalism, a multifaceted program that intends to put 30 percent of the
economy under state control, and he implicitly follows García Linera’s
view that socialism is not feasible in the Bolivian context, at least at pres-
ent, and that a “new moderated version of state capitalism” is the best that
can be achieved (36). Do Alto, a French sociologist and frequent collabora-
tor with Stefanoni, echoes many of the same contentions in describing,
more than analyzing, MAS’s origins and trajectory since 1995. Despite im-
portant insights, readers are much better off with their very readable and
detailed book, Evo Morales: De la coca al palacio (2006).10
The chapter by the Bolivian political theorist Luis Tapia offers penetrat-
ing insights, yet is casual in its treatment of historical processes. Tapia be-
gins by discussing in sweeping terms the colonialist and increasingly capi-
talist nature of the Bolivian state since independence in 1825 and its role in
fostering exploitation, domination, and political and economic inequality
by upholding the sanctity of private property. In calling the emergence of
9. See Jeffery R. Webber, “From Naked Barbarism to Barbarism with Benefits: Neolib-
eral Capitalism, Natural Gas Policy and the Evo Morales Government in Bolivia,” in Post-
Neoliberalism in the Americas, ed. Laura MacDonald and Arne Ruckert (New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009), 105–119.
10. Pablo Stefanoni and Hervé Do Alto, Evo Morales de la coca al Palacio: Una oportunidad
para la izquierda indígena (La Paz: Malatesta, 2006).
P5331.indb 255 10/15/10 1:54:15 PM

the working class “la expresión de facto de la falta de universalidad de este

derecho a la propiedad” (50), Tapia makes it a product of the systematic
and often violent dispossession of a peasantry compelled by the market
to sell its only remaining possession: its labor. Departing quite radically
from transitology literature in North American political science, Tapia
conceives of democratization as a movement “que haga posible que los no
propietarios también puedan ingresar al espacio de poder y circular junto
a otros en el mismo” (51). In contrast, neoliberalism is a form of colonial
domination, particularly by means of rampant privatization and the con-
centration of the privatized sectors in the hands of transnational capital.
The dual transition toward electoral democracy and neoliberal economics
in Bolivia in the early to mid-1980s was thus a paradox, for Tapia, because
domination and inequality deepened and strengthened in the so-called
democratic era. In alliance with transnational capital, the domestic rul-
ing class was essentially uncontested between 1985 and 2000. However,
neoliberal hegemony came increasingly under fire from left-indigenous
and mass movements from below, beginning with the Cochabamba Water
War, laying the basis for the eventual electoral victory of Morales.
Although Tapia is ultimately a critical MAS loyalist, he is uncommonly
conscious of the contradictions involved in MAS’s implementation through
the institutional apparatus of the liberal, colonialist, and capitalist state
of what were once radically anticapitalist and indigenous-liberationist
projects. Because Tapia holds the self-organization and self-activity of
the oppressed and exploited to be necessary to their emancipation from
capitalism and racism, he indicates the incongruity of MAS’s attempts to
control, redirect, and co-opt their agency, particularly in his discussion of
the constituent assembly.
Karin Monasterios’s essay on feminism “in the contexts of internal co-
lonialism and the fight for decolonization” (111) is theoretically rich but
underdeveloped empirically. Attention to the specificities of women’s
involvement in the left-indigenous movements of 2000–2005 has been
sparse.11 Monasterios makes strides toward addressing this void by
mounting a sustained critique of the gender technocracy of liberal femi-
nists associated with externally funded nongovernmental organizations
to show their neglect of the racism and class injustice endured by the ma-
jority of women who, in Bolivia, are indigenous and of popular classes.
These women played an important role in the uprisings of 2000, 2003,
and 2005.
11. Admirable exceptions include Denise Y. Arnold and Alison Spedding, Mujeres en los
movimientos sociales en Bolivia 2000–2003 (La Paz: Centro de Información y Desarrollo de la
Mujer and Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, 2005); Forrest Hylton, Lucila Choque,
and Lina Britto, La guerra del gas: Contada desde las mujeres (El Alto: Centro de Promoción de
la Mujer Gregoria Apaza, 2005).
P5331.indb 256 10/15/10 1:54:15 PM

Focusing on women’s participation in the constituent assembly since

2006, Monasterios contrasts the positions of the Federación Nacional de
Mujeres Campesinas de Bolivia-Bartolina Sisa, a peasant movement with
more than two hundred thousand female members, and the liberal Coor-
dinadora de la Mujer. Whereas the former demands a plurinational state,
the latter opposes this anticolonial reorganization, instead defending a de-
limited liberal version of democratic representation while treating women
as abstract individuals and distancing itself from left-indigenous sectors.
Monasterios is fully cognizant of the weaknesses of indigenous wom-
en’s movements in Bolivia, whose political demands do not reflect a con-
sciousness of specifically gendered oppression. However, the participa-
tion of indigenous women in political struggle has increased in recent
years of revolt, and if any movement emerges among women to overcome
the internally colonial, racist domination of the indigenous majority, it is
far more likely to come from the popular left than from liberal nongovern-
mental organizations financed by the World Bank
The final section of Reinventando la nación en Bolivia consists of a lengthy
interview by Maristella Svampa and Stefanoni with Vice President García
Linera. Born in 1962 to a middle-class family in Cochabamba and politi-
cized by the opposition to the dictatorship of Hugo Bánzer (1971–1978),
García Linera studied mathematics at the Universidad Autónoma de
México, where he became deeply involved in solidarity with the Central
American guerrilla insurgencies of the 1980s. Returning to Bolivia, he
rose to prominence in the Ejército Guerrillero Túpac Katari (EGTK) and,
under the pen name Qananchiri (meaning “one who clarifies things” in
Aymara), wrote his first books: Crítica de la nación y la nación crítica (1989)
and De demonios escondidos y momentos de revolución (1991). After a five-year
imprisonment (1992–1997), he became a professor of sociology at the Uni-
versidad Mayor de San Andrés in La Paz and was a founding member of
La Comuna, a forum of critical intellectuals named after the Paris Com-
mune of 1871. As one of the most widely recognized leftist intellectuals in
Bolivia, he was made vice presidential candidate of MAS in 2005, though
he had never previously been a member of the party.
Unfortunately, the shift from radical intellectual and political activist
to state official has seemingly dampened García Linera’s critical abilities.
The interview transcribed for this volume is notable for García Linera’s
defensiveness and rigid advocacy of each and every policy of the MAS
government. He claims that the state has assumed control over 19 per-
cent of the country’s gross domestic product and that this will increase to
30 percent in coming years. According to García Linera, this constitutes a
veritable shift toward post-neoliberalism. He also defends MAS’s develop-
ment model of Andean-Amazonian capitalism against leftist critics, whom
he labels “radical idealists” (160). This program ostensibly combines state
promotion of modern industry, microenterprises of urban artisans, and
P5331.indb 257 10/15/10 1:54:15 PM

the modernization of peasants (151). This variant of post-neoliberalism is

irreducibly capitalist, according to García Linera, but nonetheless points in
some unexplained way to a postcapitalist future (160). Culturally, García
Linera compares Morales’s election to the “symbolic revolutions” of indig-
enous heroes such as Túpac Katari, who led an uprising against Spanish
conquistadors in 1781, or Zárate Willka, who commanded insurrectionary
indigenous forces during the Bolivian Federal War of 1898–1899. García
Linera dismisses radical indigenous critics of the MAS government as
“romantic and essentialist” (157).
THE CRITICAL LEFT
Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson’s Revolutionary Horizons and

Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar’s Los ritmos del Pachakuti stand out among the
works under review for their historical and philosophical erudition, and
for their commitment to the emancipation of the oppressed. A main con-
tention of Hylton and Thomson is that the power of recent mass mobiliza-
tions in Bolivia stems from the combination of a long-standing tradition
of indigenous resistance—dating back to anticolonial rebellions of the
eighteenth century—and a “national popular” tradition that previously
“culminated in 1952[–1953] when working-class, peasant, and progressive
middle-class forces overthrew an oligarchic order established after Boliv-
ian independence in 1825” (7). These two seditious cultures coexisted in
tension with each other for much of the twentieth century, so that, though
their intersection in 2000–2005 is not entirely unprecedented, it is an out-
standing feature of the time. A second argument in Revolutionary Horizons
is that the protests of 2000–2005 should be understood as Bolivia’s third
revolution. This revolution came to “a provisional close” after the ascen-
sion of Morales in January 2006, and the subsequent fragmentation and
demobilization of social movements (127). The first two revolutions oc-
curred in 1780–1781 and 1952–1953. Hylton and Thomson explore these
and other contextual factors—capitalist expansion with the boom in silver
in the 1870s and 1880s, indigenous insurrection within the Federal War
of 1898–1899, the Chayanta rebellion of 1927, and the National Revolution
of 1952—before treating the neoliberal era of the 1980s and 1990s and the
revolutions of 2000–2005. In each case, they focus on the agency of the in-
digenous peasant and worker majority; the making of history from below;
and in the insurrections of 2000–2005, the formation of popular power
through assembly-style democracy, particularly during the Cochabamba
Water War and the first Gas War of 2003.
The theoretical treatment of Bolshevik and anarchist strategies of revo-
lution in chapter 2 and the (premature) labeling of the recent insurrections
as Bolivia’s “third revolution” are certainly open to debate as they have
been cast in this book. Even the more commonly held idea that neoliber-
P5331.indb 258 10/15/10 1:54:15 PM

alism has collapsed in Bolivia ought to be more cautiously interrogated,

given the commitment to fiscal austerity, flexible labor markets, low infla-
tion targets, and minimal social spending under Morales. These issues
aside, however, Revolutionary Horizons is a consummate sociological treat-
ment of popular Bolivian politics, the best book to turn to for an under-
standing of the current period through a profoundly historical lens.
Gutiérrez’s Los ritmos del Pachakuti is at once deeply philosophical, rev-
olutionary, and a personal meditation on the meaning of the 2000–2005
revolts. It is dense and difficult in parts, but it ultimately rewards with un-
usual originality and unwavering ethical and political commitment to the
dispossessed. A Mexican citizen, Gutiérrez studied mathematics along-
side García Linera at the Universidad Autónoma de México. They fell in
love; were active together in solidarity with Central American guerrillas;
and then moved to Bolivia, where they both took up leading roles in the
EGTK. Gutiérrez was captured and imprisoned at the same time as García
Linera and, like him, spent five years in jail. Upon release, she, too, par-
ticipated in La Comuna. Gutiérrez returned to Mexico in the early 2000s
to pursue a doctorate in politics under the supervision of the renowned
autonomist Marxist John Holloway, and she returned to Bolivia in 2006
for participatory fieldwork with the most important popular movements
in Cochabamba, La Paz, and the surrounding rural areas. Los ritmos del
Pachakuti is a revised version of the doctoral thesis that emerged from
these amassed experiences.
Gutiérrez stresses the dignity that the popular classes recovered in
their struggles against what they perceived as an unjust and impermissi-
ble social order, the autonomy that they won through assemblist forms of
grassroots democracy, and the capacity for cooperation among rural and
urban groups that these struggles reveal. Gutiérrez uses the concepts of
dignity, autonomy, and cooperation to frame her analyses of urban worker
and neighborhood movements in El Alto and La Paz, the coca growers’
resistance in the Chapare region of Cochabamba, and the struggles of Ay-
mara peasants in the western altiplano. One objective in this is to make
intelligible the insubordination of the oppressed in Bolivia between 2000
and 2005. Another is to extrapolate the “horizons of desire” expressed
by actors in these moments, so as to reflect on how they might promote a
fuller emancipation from capital and the state in the future. This combina-
tion of theory and praxis seeks not to merely understand the world but to
change it.
Los ritmos del Pachakuti is much more satisfying than much of the auton-
omist Marxism reverberating throughout Latin America because Gutiér-
rez takes seriously the need for concrete, grounded analysis of real-world
events. The abstractions that she draws are meaningful precisely because
they relate to her own experience as an activist-observer. Her commit-
ment to revolutionary anticapitalist transformation, and her skepticism
P5331.indb 259 10/15/10 1:54:15 PM

that this can come about through mere electoral occupation of existing
state apparatuses, makes Gutiérrez a much more penetrating analyst of
the Morales government than the legions of masista loyalists who spend
the bulk of their time apologizing for the government’s limitations. At
the same time, her theoretical framework tends to dismiss all too eas-
ily the complex history of anti-Stalinist, Marxist debates on state power
and revolutionary parties. Her advocacy of the self-activity and self-
organization of the exploited and oppressed is to be emulated, and her
sophisticated, nonsectarian critique of masista reformism is exemplary.
However, Gutiérrez has less to offer in regard to revolutionary strat-
egies for power. Whatever qualms I have with its specific political for-
mulations, Los ritmos del Pachakuti is the most important philosophical-
political commentary on recent Bolivian developments from a revolution-
ary perspective.
P5331.indb 260 10/15/10 1:54:16 PM

T H E C O L D WA R A N D I T S A F T E R M A T H I N
THE AMER ICAS
The Search for a Synthetic Interpretation of U.S. Policy
Robert A. Pastor
American University
Tom Long
American University
Latin America’s Cold War: An International History. By Hal Brands.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Pp. 408. $29.95 cloth.
Which Way Latin America? Hemispheric Politics Meets Globalization.
Edited by Andrew F. Cooper and Jorge Heine. New York: United Na-
tions University Press, 2009. Pp. xxix + 326. $36.00 paper.
The United States and Latin America after the Cold War. By Russell C.
Crandall. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Pp. xiv + 260.
$85.00 cloth, $24.99 paper.
In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War.
Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser. Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 2008. Pp. ix + 439. $99.95 cloth, $26.95 paper.
The Obama Administration and the Americas: An Agenda for Change.
Edited by Abraham F. Lowenthal, Ted Piccone, and Laurence White-
head. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2009. Pp. xiv +
235. $28.95 paper.
More than two decades have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall
and the transfer of the Cold War file from a daily preoccupation of policy
makers to a more detached assessment by historians. Scholars of U.S.–
Latin American relations are beginning to take advantage both of the dis-
tance in time and of newly opened archives to reflect on the four decades
that, from the 1940s to the 1980s, divided the Americas, as they did much
of the world. Others are seeking to understand U.S. policy and inter-
American relations in the post–Cold War era, a period that not only lacks
a clear definition but also still has no name. Still others have turned their
gaze forward to offer policies in regard to the region for the new Obama
administration.
P5331.indb 261 10/15/10 1:54:16 PM

Numerous books and review essays have addressed these three

subjects—the Cold War, the post–Cold War era, and current and future
issues on the inter-American agenda.1 Few of these studies attempt, how-
ever, to connect the three subjects or to offer new and comprehensive
theories to explain the course of U.S. policies from the beginning of the
twentieth century until the present. Indeed, some works and policy mak-
ers continue to use the mind-sets of the Cold War as though that conflict
were still being fought.
With the benefit of newly opened archives, some scholars have nev-
ertheless drawn insights from the depths of the Cold War that improve
our understanding of U.S. policies and inter-American relations, but they
do not address the question as to whether the United States has escaped
the longer cycle of intervention followed by neglect that has character-
ized its relations with Latin America. Another question is whether U.S.
policies differ markedly before, during, and after the Cold War. In what
follows, we ask whether the books reviewed here provide any insights
in this regard and whether they offer a compass for the future of inter-
American relations. We also offer our own thoughts as to how their vari-
ous perspectives could be synthesized to address these questions more
comprehensively.
REVISITING THE COLD WAR
In reviewing the history of the Cold War in the Americas, Latin Amer-
ica’s Cold War, by Hal Brands, and In from the Cold, edited by Gilbert Jo-
seph and Daniela Spenser, consciously seek to include Latin American
perspectives and, in the case of the latter volume, to examine the Cold
War from a grassroots and a cultural angle. These are certainly welcome
additions, but one needs to ask why the Latin American perspective has
largely been omitted from literature on the subject. There are two reasons,
empirical and theoretical.
First, almost all Latin American archives were closed to scholars; there
were no freedom-of-information instruments that allowed access to gov-
ernment documents, and few scholars tried to interview Latin American
policy makers, as they commonly did in the United States. As a result,
scholars spent time looking under the lamppost of U.S. foreign policy to
locate problems in inter-American relations.
1. Thomas F. O’Brien, “Interventions, Conventional and Unconventional: Current

Scholarship on Inter-American Relations,” Latin American Research Review 44, no. 1 (2009):
257–265; Gregory Weeks, “Recent Works on U.S.-Latin American Relations,” Latin American
Research Review 44, no. 1 (2009): 247–256; Andrés Rivarola Puntigliano, “Suspicious Minds:
Recent Books on U.S.–Latin American Relations,” Latin American Politics and Society 50,
no. 4 (2008): 155–172.
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THE COLD WAR AND ITS AFTERMATH IN THE AMERICAS 263
Even more important than the lack of data was the predominance of
a theoretical model in which the United States was the actor and Latin
America, the dependent, defenseless object. With this premise, Peter H.
Smith concluded that the study of inter-American relations required only
a “mediation on the character and conduct of the United States” and how
it exercised “its perennial predominance.”2 The title of his book, Talons of
the Eagle, evokes a rapacious and unforgiving United States preying on
the innocent victim of Latin America. Lars Schoultz similarly extracted
almost every morsel of duplicity, arrogance, and interventionism that he
could locate in U.S. diplomatic history to cook a broth that would give
heartburn to any U.S. president or idealistic citizen. In Schoultz’s view, the
United States was convinced not only of its superiority but also of Latin
America’s inferiority, and racism and the desire to dominate motivated
its actions.3 Crandall has dubbed this lens “anti-imperialist”; one of us
has described it as “radical.”4 Scholars who use this lens contend that U.S.
policy makers used the Cold War to maintain control of the region, sup-
press progressive movements, and defend an unjust order. United States
policy was the only subject worth studying. Latin America’s foreign poli-
cies were neither important nor influential.
In a prescient essay, Max Paul Friedman noted the prevalence of this
approach and suggested that it could not be sustained if historians were to
incorporate Latin American sources, archives, and perspectives. The use
of U.S. archives alone, he wrote, “may help explain why the only actor in . . .
inter-American history is the northern colossus.”5 Latin America’s Cold War
and In from the Cold follow Friedman’s call, drawing on Latin American
and Soviet archives, as well as Truth Commission reports. At their best,
these works recall the work of Friedrich Katz, who delved deeply into the
archives of nine countries to discover that Mexican revolutionaries invited
and manipulated the “imperialists” more effectively than these foreign-
ers manipulated them.6 A few authors in these collections, as well as oth-
ers whom Friedman cites, dive sufficiently deeply into Cold War sources
to test whether Katz’s conclusion applies to other cases as well, and thus
whether the radical view is confirmed or impugned by the evidence.
2. Peter H. Smith, Talons of the Eagle: Dynamics of U.S.-Latin American Relations, 2nd ed.
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 4.
3. Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
4. Robert A. Pastor, “Explaining U.S. Policy toward the Caribbean Basin: Fixed and
Emerging Images,” World Politics 28, no. 3 (1986): 483–515.
5. Max Paul Friedman, “Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In: Recent
Scholarship on United States–Latin American Relations,” Diplomatic History 27, no. 5 (2003):
626.
6. Friedrich Katz, The Secret War in Mexico: Europe, the United States, and the Mexican Revo-
lution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).
P5331.indb 263 10/15/10 1:54:16 PM

The U.S. interventions in Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961), Dominican

Republic (1965), Chile (1970), Grenada (1983), and Nicaragua and Central
America (1981–1989) figure among key events in Latin America’s Cold War
history. In each case, the radical view is that the United States intervened to
suppress popular movements and, as a result of ineptitude, pushed moder-
ate regimes into the arms of the Soviet Union and communism. After re-
viewing the archival sources available, particularly Soviet and Cuban doc-
uments, Brands finds this interpretation “not fully persuasive” (290). This
conclusion is actually too modest. In virtually every key event, the evidence
shows that the model that radicals favor is inadequate or simply wrong.
As Piero Gleijeses has shown, Guatemala’s President Jacobo Arbenz
knew that the United States opposed his government, not because of the
United Fruit Company but because he was a communist.7 This also ex-
plains why U.S. policy was benign or supportive to the equally radical but
noncommunist revolution in Bolivia and to the social democratic govern-
ment of President José Figueres in Costa Rica.8 In In from the Cold, the chap-
ters by Gleijeses and Spenser on the foreign policies of Cuba and the Soviet
Union show Fidel Castro aggressively promoting revolution throughout
Latin America before the United States reacted with the Alliance for Prog-
ress and counterinsurgency efforts. The Soviet Union sometimes helped;
at other times, it discouraged the Cubans. From the other side of the battle-
field, as Ariel Armony describes, Argentinean foreign policy was equally
aggressive while more repressive at home and in its fight against commu-
nism in Central America, even when the United States opposed its efforts.
One may conclude that Cold War history was made not by the United
States but by a clash of Latin American conservatives and revolutionaries,
with each side welcoming support—though not necessarily advice—from
one of the superpowers. Furthermore, contrary to Walter LaFeber’s thesis
that revolutions are inevitable in Latin America,9 Brands shows that they
were rare. Indeed, they succeeded only when they began as demands for
democracy against long-standing dictators such as Porfirio Díaz, Fulgen-
cio Batista, and Anastasio Somoza.10
This is not to excuse U.S. foreign policy or to suggest that it was un-
important but to confirm only that Latin America has also played a sub-
7. Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–
1954 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991).
8. See Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 77–83; Kyle Longley, The Sparrow
and the Hawk: Costa Rica and the United States during the Rise of José Figueres (Tuscaloosa: Uni-
versity of Alabama Press, 1997).
9. Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1983).
10. Robert A. Pastor, Not Condemned to Repetition: The United States and Nicaragua (Boul-
der, CO: Westview Press, 2002), chap. 1.
P5331.indb 264 10/15/10 1:54:16 PM

stantial role in inter-American relations, and that economic interests and

the need to dominate are not the sole motivations of the United States.
Leaders such as Jimmy Carter sincerely promoted human rights. Others
such as John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton promoted economic reforms and
democracy. And still others claimed to support human rights but actually
did the opposite. No one captures this hypocrisy better than Secretary of
State Henry Kissinger, who came to the Organization of American States
(OAS) General Assembly in Chile in June 1976 to give a speech on human
rights. Tom Blanton refers to the memorandum of conversation in which
Kissinger privately told the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to ignore
his speech, which was intended to fool the U.S. Congress. “My evalua-
tion,” Kissinger said to the dictator, “is that you are a victim of all left-
wing groups around the world and that your greatest sin was that you
overthrew a government which was going communist. . . . I want you to
succeed” (Joseph and Spenser, 56).
The documents obtained by truth commissions shed light on the re-
pression by Argentine and Chilean military governments, helping us to
understand that the most brutal struggles in Latin America’s Cold War
were between domestic militaries and young revolutionaries and that
there were many innocent people caught in the cross fire or the govern-
ment’s web. In that struggle, the left “did poorly” and the far right “saw its
luck run out in the 1980s” (Brands, 399). Che Guevara’s attempt to replicate
foco revolution in Bolivia epitomized the failure of Cuba—and to a lesser
degree, the Soviet Union—to promote revolution in the region. Sporadic
U.S. efforts to promote democracy and reform fared no better. In brief,
neither the United States nor the Soviet Union and Cuba succeeded. The
conservative roots of the region held back violent change and reform until
the Cold War ended. At that point, democracy extended to all but Cuba
and Haiti, and reforms also began to spread, though not as deeply or as
fast as many hoped.
Some of the best contributions to Latin America’s Cold War and In from
the Cold derive from materials in Soviet archives and truth commissions.
Largely missing are documents from foreign and defense ministries and
presidential offices in Latin America. These would have permitted an un-
derstanding of what Latin American governments wanted and how they
fared. For example, documents are needed to show how Latin Americans
promoted the Panama Canal treaties; how the United States, Brazil, and
Argentina addressed the nuclear issue; how Andean governments decided
to deal with drug issues and the United States. A true understanding of
the rest of Latin America’s foreign policies will have to await the opening
of these archives and a new generation of scholars.
P5331.indb 265 10/15/10 1:54:17 PM

THE POST – COLD WAR
Within a few years of the Soviet implosion, the wars in Central Amer-
ica came to an end, some with elections and others with negotiated agree-
ments. Those who claimed that the wars were wholly indigenous and
those who claimed that they were simply a creature of Soviet or U.S. impe-
rialism were both partially wrong. But there is little question that the Cold
War’s demise extracted the poison from these conflicts and made possible
a sharp change in the inter-American agenda from ideological struggles
to democratic contests. The United States remained engaged in the post–
Cold War period but at a much-reduced level of attention and resources.
Russell Crandall, a professor at Davidson College with government
experience, surveys U.S. policy toward the region since the end of the
Cold War. Using mostly newspaper accounts and occasionally interviews,
he provides a balanced account of events and issues. At the same time,
he interprets policy debates and literature through a simple but helpful
frame comprising two groups, whom he calls the establishment and anti-
imperialists. Crandall further divides the establishment between liberal/
Democrat and conservative/Republican forces, whose different approaches
can be equated more broadly with those of scholars and policy makers. Re-
publicans view threats more intensely, act alone more often, are more de-
voted to private enterprise and free trade, tend to militarize the “wars” on
drugs and terror, and are most strongly opposed to undocumented migra-
tion, whereas Democrats adopt a more relaxed and multilateral approach,
defend human rights and democracy more intensely, are more skeptical
about free trade, and are more committed to development assistance. De-
bate between the two philosophies has influenced the U.S. government’s
policies toward Latin America. There is much less debate among academ-
ics. As Friedman noted, the anti-imperialist or radical perspective has in-
formed most scholarship on U.S. policies toward Latin America.
Although the anti-imperialist label is useful, Crandall employs it with-
out exploring what scholars such as Greg Grandin mean when they refer
to a U.S. “empire” in Latin America.11 The concepts of empire and hege-
mony are too frequently used, and too inadequately defined, in inter-
national relations, and the anti-imperialist school uses them as though lit-
tle had changed since the nineteenth century. Although the United States
has been the most powerful state in the hemisphere in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries, it has not been a colonial empire, and the successful
half century of defiance by Fidel Castro calls into question the meaning
of U.S. hegemony.
11. Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the
New Imperialism (New York: Henry Holt, 2006).
P5331.indb 266 10/15/10 1:54:17 PM

Crandall’s thesis is that much has changed after the Cold War because
security is less important. The United States is less constrained and Latin
Americans are more able to diversify their relationships. Democratization
has made governments more accountable to constituents, and globaliza-
tion has reduced dependence on the United States and connected the re-
gion’s economies to the world. Crandall recognizes that some events do
not fit comfortably into this framework. How strange, he suggests, that
Senator Christopher Dodd, a leading dove during the Cold War, became
an energetic hawk, promoting the sale of helicopters to Colombia during
the war on drugs. Constituency interests, in fact, easily explain this behav-
ior: helicopters are built in Dodd’s state, and the drug war is a domestic
concern. The hard question, which Crandall does not address, is whether
Dodd would have promoted the sale of Connecticut-built helicopters to
repressive military governments during the Cold War. Probably not.
Certain policies and interpretations have not changed as much as we
might think. Crandall notes, for example, that criticism of Evo Morales by
the U.S. ambassador during Bolivia’s presidential campaign in 2002 had
the counterproductive effect of lifting Morales’s recognition and support.
This is not a new phenomenon. The U.S. ambassador Spruille Braden made
a similar mistake toward Juan Perón in the 1946 election in Argentina.
FUTURE POLICY
A paradox of contemporary inter-American relations is that Latin

America is more distant from U.S. foreign policy and closer to U.S. domes-
tic policy. The U.S. national security policy has focused on the Middle East
and Central Asia, particularly since 9/11, and some of the most controver-
sial domestic issues—immigration, drug trafficking, crime, energy, and
free trade—involve Latin America. The collections edited by Lowenthal,
Piccone, and Whitehead and by Cooper and Heine acknowledge this new
reality and propose policies to address it.
Nearly all the contributors to The Obama Administration and the Americas
observe that Latin America is unlikely to receive great attention during
this presidency. Still, they argue that Latin American nations matter “not
as areas of dramatic crisis” but because their cooperation is needed to ad-
dress “intermestic issues” like those identified above (Lowenthal, 4). Of
course, the fact that the term intermestic was coined in the mid-1970s sug-
gests that these issues are not new; nor are they a post–Cold War idea.12
And many of them are difficult enough to resolve within a country, let
alone among several.
12. Bayless Manning coined the term intermestic, in “The Congress, the Executive, and
Intermestic Affairs: Three Proposals,” Foreign Affairs 55 (1977): 306–324.
P5331.indb 267 10/15/10 1:54:17 PM

The Obama Administration expands on a Brookings Institution–sponsored

report that emphasized inter-American cooperation on energy, trade, and
drugs.13 Although its main focus is democracy and the rule of law, the
book also identifies a set of country problems—in Colombia, Haiti, Cuba,
Venezuela, and Mexico—that point to the most difficult dilemmas that
the United States faces in the twenty-first century. The consensus that the
Americas seemed to have reached on democracy and trade in the mid-
1990s broke down in the following decade, and indeed, the Americas are
now probably better understood as four subregions rather than as a single
block: the Andean countries, the countries of the Mercado Común del
Sur (Mercosur), Central America and the Caribbean, and North America.
Each subregion has a different set of concerns and, in some cases in the
Andean region, define and practice democracy differently. Few countries,
including the United States and Brazil, are as interested in pursuing freer
trade in the twenty-first century with the vigor that they pursued it in the
last decade of the twentieth century.
When Lowenthal makes the case for focusing “early and strategically
on U.S. relations with Latin America” (xi), he is writing about energy secu-
rity, drug trafficking, and migration, but, from the U.S. perspective, these
are not U.S.–Latin American issues. They are North American issues.
Canada and Mexico are the two largest sources of energy imported into
the United States. About 33 percent of legal immigrants and 60 percent of
illegal immigrants originate from Mexico, and nearly 90 percent of all co-
caine entering the United States transits through Mexico. North America’s
weight is such that one wonders why all these books discuss U.S.–Latin
American relations, yet none discusses North American relations. North
America alone accounts for 89 percent of the gross product and 75 percent
of all trade in the Americas. The North American challenge is that the is-
sues on the agenda—immigration, energy, drugs—are considered domes-
tic, and the three governments have been derelict in allowing the market
to expand faster than governance.14
Other subregions pose different problems for Washington. The small,
open, and vulnerable economies of Central America and the Caribbean
represent a continuing challenge. In The Obama Administration, McCoy,
Molina, Shifter, and Pardo astutely describe the populist and increasingly
authoritarian regimes of the Andes. The Mercosur countries are more
distant from the United States geographically, economically, and socially,
13. The Brookings Institution, “Rethinking U.S.–Latin American Relations” (No-

vember 2008) (accessed at http://www.brookings.edu/reports/2008/~/media/Files/rc/
reports/2008/1124_latin_america_partnership/1124_latin_america_partnership.pdf).
14. Robert A. Pastor, “The Future of North America: Replacing a Bad Neighbor Policy,”
Foreign Affairs 87, no. 4 (2008): 84–98.
P5331.indb 268 10/15/10 1:54:17 PM

and they have demonstrated a capacity and desire for regional leadership
entirely apart from the United States.
Lowenthal and his coauthors offer pragmatic and progressive pol-
icy recommendations along the lines that Crandall would call liberal/
Democratic. They propose that the United States avoid militarizing its
Latin America policy, increase development aid, and strengthen multilat-
eral organizations including the OAS. On drug trafficking, they suggest
that the Obama administration accept U.S. responsibility for the demand
for drugs and firearms. In early visits to Mexico, the president and secre-
tary of state both spoke of “shared responsibility.” Laurence Whitehead
closes the volume by calling for the Project for the Americas, which would
promote “the consolidation of peaceful, law-abiding, rights-respecting,
and environmentally friendly democracies with respect for local diversity
and autonomy, and multilateral game rules” (221). That about covers the
landscape, without penetrating it.
Which Way Latin America? offers a comprehensive survey of the region’s
transformation and fragmentation after the Cold War. Shifter notes the
optimism of the first Summit of the Americas in 1994 and the discord of
the 2005 summit in Argentina, and attributes this difference to the retreat
from free trade by both the United States and Venezuela, albeit for dif-
ferent reasons, and the increasing authoritarianism of Andean countries.
Castañeda and Morales offer empirical backing to Castañeda’s distinction
between new leftist regimes like that of Lula da Silva in Brazil and the
less democratic model of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela. Cooper explains the
consequences of the Bush administration’s obsession with Chávez and its
disdain for multilateral organizations. Some of the book’s best chapters
describe the very different impacts of the rise of Asia on fragile Caribbean
economies and of the region’s new power, Brazil.
In their introduction, the editors write that globalization means an ex-
pansion of choice in Latin America, not an erosion of the state. Neverthe-
less, other chapters show that globalization means very different things
to different countries. To Mexico and other nations with a heavy reliance
on the U.S. market, globalization means displacement by China and its
cheaper manufactured goods, even while those countries remain very
much a part of the North American market. To the agriculture-, oil-, and
mineral-producing countries of South America, globalization has meant
higher prices for resource exports. In brief, globalization paradoxically
contributes to fragmentation and subregionalization in the hemisphere.
Which Way Latin America? raises important questions and offers some
new answers on apparently leftward trends, the uneven progress of de-
mocracy, and the struggle to find a place in the global economy. However,
the book does not respond fully or consistently to the challenge of its title
to survey the boundary between hemispheric politics and globalization.
P5331.indb 269 10/15/10 1:54:17 PM

THEORIES AND THREADS
If U.S. inattention, diverse experiences of globalization, and increasing

“intermesticity” marks the post–Cold War, post-9/11 world, is U.S. policy
toward Latin America destined to be hopelessly ad hoc in the future? The
answer may reside in two ironies. With Fidel Castro’s departure from the
world stage, one would have thought that hemispheric politics might be-
come less personalistic. But instead, other oversize personalities—Hugo
Chávez, Evo Morales—have sought to redefine Latin America in their own
images. Their success will vary inversely with the progress of democracy,
or—to make the same point from the other direction—the consolidation
of democracy will arrive when institutions that check and balance one
another are more important than leaders.
The second irony is almost too rich to believe. Since Castro’s rise to
power, the populist left in Latin America has often accused the OAS of
being an instrument of the United States, and thus has shown little inter-
est in it. In 2009, however, the same leftist leaders pushed the OAS into the
center of hemispheric politics twice. First, they insisted that the 1962 reso-
lution suspending Cuba from the OAS be repealed. For domestic political
reasons, the Obama administration would have preferred to sidestep the
issue, but, when that proved impossible, it insisted that the organization
heed the Inter-American Democratic Charter. After considerable debate,
on June 3, 2009, a resolution unanimously passed the OAS General Assem-
bly in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, revoking the 1962 suspension but declar-
ing that Cuba’s participation “will be the result of a process initiated at the
request of the government of Cuba, and in accordance with the practices,
purposes, and principles of the O.A.S.”15 This appeared to satisfy all sides.
Before the month of June ended, Honduras returned to the center of
OAS politics when the military arrested President Manuel Zelaya and
forced him into exile. Again led by Chávez, the OAS condemned this ac-
tion as a coup and insisted on his reinstatement. The irony is, of course,
that Chávez was reluctant to acknowledge the Inter-American Democratic
Charter when he pressed for Cuba’s return to the OAS but discovered its
importance when his ally Zelaya was exiled. The leaders, who before had
dismissed the OAS and the Inter-American Democratic Charter, now
placed them at the center of hemispheric politics. We will need some time
to assess whether these two events are a sign of what is to come or a signal
of what has already passed.
The books under review survey the past sixty years, although all are
conscious that history did not begin with the Cold War. They focus on
15. Organization of American States, 39th General Assembly, “Resolution on Cuba”

(A.G. Res. 2438), San Pedro Sula, Honduras, June 3, 2009 (accessed at http://www.oas.org/
dil/AG04688E08.doc).
P5331.indb 270 10/15/10 1:54:18 PM

events, policies, and bilateral relationships, and some of them offer a

framework or a thesis to explain U.S. policies and inter-American rela-
tions. Brands’s international history shows that the policies of the global
superpowers are more easily understandable when one knows what both
were doing and that they were not the only important actors in the Cold
War. The contributors to In from the Cold also document Latin American
agency while taking into account cultural and quotidian realities that have
played only a minor role in previous histories. Crandall succinctly sum-
marizes the events and perspectives that have determined U.S. policies to-
ward Latin America during the past twenty years. Meanwhile, the essays
in Which Way Latin America? take important steps in conceptualizing this
new reality. Lowenthal and his colleagues offer policy options for how the
Obama administration can best cope with a changed inter-American sys-
tem. Some of the authors critique the radical or, as Crandall calls it, anti-
imperialist school; many others continue to find that school instructive.
What is lacking in all of these efforts is a thesis or, rather, a synthesis
able to explain U.S. policy from the beginning of the twentieth century
through the first decade of the twenty-first. Brands and some contributors
to In from the Cold encourage an interactive approach in which the United
States and Latin American nations are both actors rather than the United
States being the actor and Latin America the object.
In fact, U.S. involvement in Latin America during the Cold War reflects
a pattern that has defined U.S. policy since the Spanish-American War of
1898, and especially since construction of the Panama Canal: the United
States has intervened whenever it perceives that a foreign rival could
exploit instability. When the crisis has passed, the United States disen-
gages and shifts its attention elsewhere. This cycle has been described as a
whirlpool that first sucks the United States into its vortex, and then allows
it to float to the edge, thinking that it has escaped, only to draw it back in
when a new crisis occurs.16 This model stands in contrast to the radical
theory that the desire to dominate motivates U.S. policies. Were the latter
true, U.S. involvement would deepen and expand after a crisis, because its
rivals would be weaker. In this sense, the radical thesis coincides with that
of the realist school, which argues that states always seek to expand and
that their only deterrent is the force of opponents.17
The division between the Cold War and post–Cold War eras offers a
clear test of the two theses. Radical-realists predict continued and more
16. Robert A. Pastor, Exiting the Whirlpool: U.S. Foreign Policy toward Latin America and the
Caribbean (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2001). On the interactive thesis, also see Pastor,
“Explaining U.S. Policy.”
17. John Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 2001).
There is a certain irony in the congruence of views between radicals, who are embarrassed
by the pursuit of U.S. power, and realists, who expect it as a rule of international relations.
P5331.indb 271 10/15/10 1:54:18 PM

expansive U.S. efforts in the post–Cold War era; the whirlpool thesis pre-
dicts a decline in attention and involvement. The consensus of the policy-
oriented books examined here is that U.S. attention has lapsed. “It is
unlikely,” Lowenthal and his coeditors write, “that the new U.S. adminis-
tration will find much time to think about the countries of Latin America
and the Caribbean” (xi). The United States is at the edge of the whirlpool
again.
Works on the Cold War also offer an opportunity to test a second
hypothesis—this one on American exceptionalism. Anti-imperialist
scholars accuse the United States of failing to live up to its claims that it
is different and better than other great powers. They seek to strip away
the rhetoric and expose U.S. policy as motivated by a hunger for power,
base economic interests, or racial prejudice, leaving the United States no
different from other imperialist nations. Again, this perspective is con-
sistent with the realist view that all major powers behave alike. Nonethe-
less, the idea of American exceptionalism also, ironically, captures anti-
imperialists. Their harsh critique of U.S. policy is actually rooted not in
how other powers behave but in how the United States professes to be-
have, that is, idealistically.
The history of U.S. policy toward Latin America is replete with real-
ism and cynicism on the one hand and idealism on the other hand. Real-
ists and radicals would have predicted that, after Mexico’s surrender in
1848, the U.S. Army would have marched as far down through Central
and South America as it could, whereas it stopped and agreed to the Río
Grande as a border.18 They would have expected the United States to re-
spond positively to requests by El Salvador and the Dominican Republic
to be annexed, whereas those requests were rejected. They would have ex-
pected the United States to annex Cuba after the Spanish-American War,
but President McKinley adhered to the Teller amendment. They would
not have predicted the good neighbor policy of Franklin Roosevelt or the
human rights policy of Jimmy Carter. Compared with the behavior of past
great powers, U.S. exceptionalism has been imperfect but undeniable.
At the beginning of the twenty-first century, democracy and free trade
seemed to have consolidated, and it looked as though the United States
had found an exit from the whirlpool. But as the first decade of this cen-
tury concludes, that prediction seems premature. Democracy is again en-
dangered, free trade has stalled and threatens to go into reverse, and the
exit from the whirlpool is not as clearly marked. As the crisis in Honduras
has made clear, instability still threatens. The hemisphere has not escaped
18. It is true that one reason that the United States rejected the idea of annexing all of
Mexico was racism and sectional differences. However, realists argue that state expansion
responds to the balance of power and not to internal causes.
P5331.indb 272 10/15/10 1:54:18 PM

the rules of the international system; its countries still compete with one
another, and some of its leaders still seek ways to remain in power.
These books offer a reinterpretation of the Cold War in Latin America.
However, when we turn to the past two decades, it is clear that we have yet
to synthesize the concepts necessary to understand today’s inter-American
system. The job of historians and political scientists is not over.
P5331.indb 273 10/15/10 1:54:18 PM

T R A N S L AT E D A B S T R AC T S
indigenous language usage and maintenance patterns among

indigenous people in the era of neoliberal multiculturalism
in mexico and guatemala
Hirotoshi Yoshioka
RESUMEN: Tanto en México como en Guatemala, las lenguas indígenas están
actualmente en peligro de extinción. Dado que las lenguas influyen la forma de
pensar y ayudan a las personas a identificarse con grupos étnicos específicos,
la pérdida de lenguas indígenas puede resultar en severos problemas que van
más allá de la desaparición de esas lenguas. Aunque las reformas multiculturales
actuales les ofrecen a los pueblos indígenas oportunidades sin precedentes, estos
cambios que parecen aparentemente positivos pueden amenazar a las lenguas y
culturas indígenas. Utilizando datos de los censos más recientes, presento cómo
factores socioeconómicos, demográficos y de las comunidades correlacionan ne-
gativamente con el uso de lenguas indígenas. Argumento que el mantenimiento
de lenguas indígenas se hará más difícil ya que el multiculturalismo neoliberal
apoya los derechos culturales indígenas sin llevar a cabo los cambios necesarios.
El establecimiento de estrategias efectivas de preservación de lenguas exige que
reconozcamos los peligros ocultos en el proyecto multicultural, que nos pregun-
temos rigorosamente como podemos desestigmatizar las imágenes negativas atri-
buidas a las culturas indígenas y que combatamos la opresión y discriminación
seculares de los grupos indígenas.
our indians in our america: anti-imperialist imperialism

and the construction of brazilian modernity
Tracy Devine Guzmán
RESUMO: Os povos indígenas têm sido usados e imaginados como guardiões
das fronteiras brasileiras desde meados do século XIX. Esta associação esteve no
cerne da fundação do Serviço de Proteção aos Índios (SPI) durante a primeira
parte do século XX e culminou, na virada do novo milênio, no Sistema de Vigilân-
cia da Amazônia (SIVAM). O antigo desejo nacional de estabelecer um domínio
protetor sobre territórios nacionais em disputa sujeitou indivíduos e grupos iden-
tificados como “índios” ao poder dos discursos convergentes de progresso cien-
tífico, segurança nacional e desenvolvimento econômico. Esta trindade da mo-
dernidade brasileira interpelou os povos nativos através da prática e retórica da
educação, que formam a base da sua relação com a sociedade dominante do país.
Usando como fontes principais os arquivos do SPI, documentos governamentais,
jornalismo popular, fotografia e filmografia etnográfica, além de testemunhos in-
dividuais, este trabalho busca analisar o impacto da “trindade modernista” na
política indigenista do estado e na vida das pessoas que foram subjugadas ao seu
“poder tutelar.” Ao transformar os espaços privados dos indígenas em um domí-
nio público e aberto, a política brasileira de imperialismo anti-imperialista acabou
estendendo a relação metonímica e colonialista entre “nossos índios” e “nossa
América” até a primeira parte do século XXI.
P5331.indb 274 10/15/10 1:54:18 PM

TRANSLATED ABSTRACTS 275
reconstructing indigenous ethnicities: the arapium

and jaraqui peoples of the lower amazon, brazil
Omaira Bolaños
RESUMEN: En América Latina la reivindicación de la identidad indígena por
parte de grupos que previamente no se habían considerados como tales se ha
convertido en un asunto urgente de investigaciones sociológicas y antropológicas.
Académicos han estudiado éste fenómeno con el fin de entender los diferentes
aspectos que lo han motivado y las implicaciones políticas del crecimiento de la
población indígena en indicadores demográfico nacionales. Sin embargo, poco se
conoce sobre cómo las poblaciones que reclaman reconocimiento como indígena
construyen el significado de la identidad étnica indígena. Basándome en sesenta y
cuatro entrevistas en profundidad, entrevistas con grupos y observación partici-
pante, el presente artículo explora el proceso dual de construcción de la identidad:
la reconstrucción de la identidad Arapium y la creación de la identidad Jaraqui
en la baja Amazonia brasileña. Los resultados de la investigación revelan seis
conceptos diferentes a través de los cuales toma forma el sentido de la identidad
indígena y se establecen los elementos claves del discurso que sirve para hacer
los reclamos de identidad. Los temas son sentido de arraigo, memoria histórica,
transformación histórica, conciencia, exclusión social y política de la identidad.
electoral revolution or democratic alternation?

María Victoria Murillo, Virginia Oliveros, and Milan Vaishnav
RESUMEN: En los últimos años, una parte importante de la literatura sobre
América Latina se ha enfocado en el estudio del éxito electoral de la izquierda
en la región. A partir del análisis de tendencias electorales y de opinión pública,
nuestro argumento principal es que este fenómeno regional refleja una normali-
zación de la política democrática más que una “revolución” de izquierda o una re-
acción a las reformas neoliberales de los años 90. En particular, el apoyo electoral
a la izquierda refleja el desencanto de los votantes con gobiernos de derecha cuyo
desempeño económico no ha sido satisfactorio. Usando una base de datos origi-
nal que incluye dieciocho países de la región, el análisis estadístico muestra que
el reciente éxito de la izquierda en América Latina se explica fundamentalmente
por el voto económico retrospectivo de los ciudadanos. En función de estos resul-
tados, se puede concluir que la sanción (accountability) electoral de los votantes es
el mecanismo fundamental de control del ejecutivo en las jóvenes democracias de
la región.
the eagle and the serpent on the screen: the state as

spectacle in mexican cinema
Daniel Chávez
RESUMEN: Estudios recientes sobre la historia del cine mexicano continúan
informando sobre las complejas relaciones entre el estado y la industria fílmica,
pero los aspectos más frecuentemente analizados tienden a ser los mismos: el al-
cance y formas de la censura, y la dependencia financiera del estado. Para ampliar
esta perspectiva se propone una clasificación de los discursos cinemáticos que
representan la relación entre los personajes de películas y los poderes estatales.
P5331.indb 275 10/15/10 1:54:19 PM

Se discuten cuatro modos básicos de representación que determinados por las

circunstancias económicas e históricas reflejan y median en las actitudes y dis-
posición de los espectadores hacia el régimen político. Para cada modo se estudia
una secuencia de una cinta paradigmática y se analizan los aspectos visuales e
ideológicos en relación con la coyuntura política al momento del estreno de la
cinta. Finalmente, se argumenta que a pesar del resurgimiento del cine mexicano
y de un tono más crítico en su acercamiento a las instituciones del estado, el cine
de ficción todavía descansa en representaciones indirectas y alegóricas de eventos
recientes. Esto debido a la incertidumbre en la prolongada y aún incompleta tran-
sición a la institucionalidad democrática en la política de México.
PRECURSORS TO FEMICIDE: GUATEMALAN WOMEN IN A VORTEX OF VIOLENCE

David Carey Jr. and M. Gabriela Torres
RESUMEN: Hoy en día las mujeres en Guatemala son asesinadas con la misma
frecuencia en la cual fueron asesinadas a principios de los años 80 cuando la gue-
rra civil se transformo en un genocidio. Sin embargo, la epidemia actual de fe-
micidios no es algo fuera de lo común en la historia guatemalteca sino más bien
una reflexión de los procesos a través de los cuales la violencia en contra de las
mujeres en Guatemala se normaliza. La violencia de género que se transmuta en
femicidio durante una época de paz, época en la cual los gobernantes han per-
dido la habilidad de manejar al poder paramilitar y extralegal que ejerce control
efectivo sobre el país, fue utilizada en el pasado para reinscribir el patriarcado y
sostener tanto regímenes de dictadores como de demócratas. La incorporación de
prácticas de impunidad durante el siglo XX, proceso a través del cual se natura-
liza la violencia de género, ahora sirve como la base primordial que hace posible
el mantenimiento y la expansión del femicidio. Ofrecemos aquí un análisis de la
dimensión histórica que facilita las prácticas culturales de género que sostienen
tanto la violencia generalizada como la impunidad misma. Este análisis posibilita
una reconceptualización las relaciones sociales que hacen posible la realización
del femicido como expresión clásica de la violencia en la posguerra.
household shocks, child labor, and child schooling:

evidence from guatemala
William F. Vásquez and Alok K. Bohara
RESUMEN: Basado en datos de la Encuesta Nacional de Condiciones de Vida
conducida en Guatemala en 2000, este artículo evalúa la hipótesis de que los ho-
gares guatemaltecos utilizan el trabajo infantil y reducen la escolaridad de los ni-
ños para enfrentar eventos negativos. Primero, se utiliza análisis de factores para
estimar la propensión latente de los hogares a sufrir desastres naturales y eventos
socioeconómicos. Luego, se estiman modelos probit bivariados para identificar los
determinantes del trabajo y escolaridad infantil incluyendo la propensión de los
hogares a desastres naturales y eventos socioeconómicos. Los resultados sugieren
que los hogares utilizan el trabajo infantil para recuperarse de desastres naturales
y eventos socioeconómicos. En contraste, no se encontró evidencia que sugiera
que los hogares reducen la escolaridad de los niños para recuperarse de dichos
eventos. Los resultados también indican que es más probable que los hogares po-
bres utilicen el trabajo infantil y reduzcan la escolaridad de los niños como estra-
tegias de recuperación ante eventos socioeconómicos.
P5331.indb 276 10/15/10 1:54:19 PM

TRANSLATED ABSTRACTS 277
instituciones políticas y políticas públicas en la

federación brasileña
Fabiano Santos and Cristiane Batista
RESUMEN: O objetivo do trabalho é analizar os determinantes das políticas
públicas de natureza social nos estados brasileiros. Mais especificamente, trata-se
de examinar o gasto público nas áreas de saúde e educação e explorar as possíveis
causas de variações eventualmente observadas. A motivação teórica desta pro-
posta advém de uma linha de investigação existente na literatura a qual afirma
que o Executivo estadual é no Brasil uma força sem contraposição no interior do
sistema político nos estados e que, ademais, a lógica de produção de políticas pú-
blicas encontrar-se-ia vinculada aos objetivos individuais do governador. Entre-
tanto, segundo nossos resultados, foram descartadas as hipóteses nulas de inexis-
tência de um efeito positivo da ideologia do governador sobre o nível do gasto
social e da ausência de impacto negativo do número de comissões, embora so-
mente em governos controlados pela esquierda, sobre este mismo nível de gasto.
P5331.indb 277 10/15/10 1:54:19 PM

NOTES ON THE CON TR IBU TOR S
Cristiane Batista received her Ph.D. in political science from Rio de Ja-
neiro’s Graduate Institute of Research (IUPERJ) in 2006. She is visiting re-
searcher at the Public Health National School (FIOCRUZ-RJ). She is the
author of “Partidos políticos, ideologia e política social na América Latina:
1980–1990” (Dados, 2008).
Alok K. Bohara is professor of economics and the founding director of the
Nepal Study Center at the University of New Mexico. He has a master’s
degree in statistics and taught at Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He received
his Ph.D. from the University of Colorado (Boulder) in economics in 1986.
He is a senior research fellow at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Center for Health Policy at the University of New Mexico. His research
work has been extensively published in various national and international
journals on topics such as inflation uncertainty, nonmarket valuation of
public goods, ethnic and gender discrimination, the pollution-growth
link, and good governance.
Omaira Bolaños is the program coordinator for Latin America at Rights
and Resources Group. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology and her
master’s degree in Latin American studies, with a concentration in tropi-
cal conservation and development, from the University of Florida. She has
worked extensively in development and community-based conservation
and watershed management with indigenous and peasant communities
in Colombia and other Latin American countries. She had conducted re-
search in Bolivia on community forestry in indigenous territories and in
Brazil on indigenous identity claims and territorial rights.
David Carey Jr. is associate professor of history and women’s studies at the
University of Southern Maine. His publications include Our Elders Teach
Us: Maya-Kaqchikel Historical Perspectives. Xkib’ij kan qate’ qatata’ (University
of Alabama Press, 2001), Ojer taq tzijob’äl kichin ri Kaqchikela’ Winaqi’ (A His-
tory of the Kaqchikel People) (Q’anilsa Ediciones, 2004), and Engendering
Mayan History: Mayan Women as Agents and Conduits of the Past, 1875–1970
(Routledge, 2006). He currently is working on a manuscript about gender,
ethnicity, crime, and state power in Guatemala from 1898 to 1944.
Sara Castro-Klaren is professor of Latin American culture and lit-
erature at Johns Hopkins University. She has been director of the Latin
American Studies Program there on two occasions. She has published
extensively on the Latin American novel; postcolonial theory; and topics
on Andean colonial and contemporary historiography, with special ref-
erence to subaltern studies and imperial discourses. Her first book was
El mundo mágico de José María Arguedas (Lima, 1973, recently reissued in
France by Indigo Press, 2004). Her second book, a collection of essays on
Julio Cortázar, Guamán Poma, and Diamela Eltit appeared in Mexico in
1989 under the title Escritura y transgresión en la literatura Latino Americana.
P5331.indb 278 10/15/10 1:54:19 PM

NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS 279
Her book Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa (University of South Carolina

Press) followed in 1990. She is currently revising several essays on An-
dean historiography that will appear under the title The Narrow Passage of
Our Nerves. She has also edited several anthologies and readers for which
she has written prologues, introductions, and chapters.
Daniel Chávez is assistant professor of Spanish and American studies at
the University of Virginia. His articles on Mexican literature and media,
Latin American cinema, and U.S. Latino studies have appeared in inter-
national journals in Spain, the United Kingdom, Mexico, and the United
States. He is currently working on two book projects, one on twentieth-
century cultural politics in Nicaragua and the other on new media repre-
sentations of Mexican history.
Tracy Devine Guzmán is assistant professor at the University of Miami,
where she teaches in the Department of Modern Languages and Liter-
atures and the Program in Latin American Studies. Her research inter-
ests include intellectual history, social theory, ethnic politics, educational
practices, and cultural production in Brazil and the Andes. Her work has
appeared in Bulletin of Latin American Research, Journal of Latin American
Cultural Studies, Latin Americanist, and other specialized publications in
the United States and Latin America. She is completing a book that exam-
ines the role of indigenous peoples and indigeneity in Brazilian national-
ism, sovereignty, and popular culture.
Tom Long is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of International Service at
American University. He received his bachelor’s degree in journalism from
the University of Missouri. His research explores the concept, causes, and
processes of foreign policy change through the history of inter-American
relations.
María Victoria Murillo received her Ph.D. from Harvard University
and is associate professor of political science and international affairs at
Columbia University. Her research focuses on labor politics, political par-
ties, the political economy of policy making, and institutional weakness
in Latin America. She has published Political Competition, Partisanship and
Policymaking in Latin American Public Utilities (Cambridge University Press,
2009); Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions and Market Reforms in Latin America
(Cambridge University Press, 2001); and numerous articles in U.S. and
Latin American journals.
Virginia Oliveros is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Sci-
ence at Columbia University. In her dissertation, she studies the electoral
returns of patronage politics in Argentina. Her other research interests
include elections, electoral rules, and voting behavior in Argentina and
the Latin American new left.
Robert A. Pastor is professor of international relations at American Uni-
versity and founder and codirector of both the Center for North American
Studies and the Center for Democracy and Election Management. From
1985 to 2002, he was professor of political science at Emory University and
P5331.indb 279 10/15/10 1:54:19 PM

founder and director of the Latin American and Caribbean Program at

the Carter Center. He was director of Latin American Affairs on the Na-
tional Security Council during the Carter administration and a consultant
to the State and Defense departments during the Clinton administration.
He received his Ph.D. in government from Harvard University and is the
author or editor of seventeen books, including Not Condemned to Repeti-
tion: The United States and Nicaragua and Exiting the Whirlpool: U.S. Policy
to Latin America and the Caribbean. He is completing a new book titled The
North American Idea.
Archibald R. M. Ritter is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus in
the Department of Economics and the Norman Paterson School of Inter-
national Affairs at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He has worked
in the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean,
Santiago, Chile (1973–1974), the Department of Energy Mines and Re-
sources, Government of Canada (1979–1981), and has lived and worked
in Kenya and Tanzania. He was the coordinator on the Canadian side of
the Carleton Masters in Economics Program provided with the University
of Havana for young Cuban professors from 1994 to 1999. His research
interests and publications relate to development issues in East Africa and
Latin America, especially Cuba and Chile, together with the international
economy and the international mineral economy. His first major publica-
tion on Cuba was The Economic Development of Revolutionary Cuba: Strategy
and Performance (Praeger, 1974), and he is most recently editor of The Cuban
Economy (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004).
Fabiano Santos received her Ph.D. in political science from Rio de Ja-
neiro’s Graduate Institute of Research (IUPERJ) in 1994. She is a professor
and researcher in political science in the same institution. She is president
of the Brazilian Political Science Association and author of various works
on Brazilian politics with a particular emphasis on executive-legislative
relations.
M. Gabriela Torres, assistant professor of anthropology at Wheaton Col-
lege, MA, is a specialist in the anthropology of violence and the state with
research experience in the study of gender, memory, and migration. Her
research focuses on the nature and practice of violence, gendered effects
of violence, the development of the state, urban development, and identity
formation.
Harold Trinkunas is associate professor of national security affairs at
the Naval Postgraduate School. He has published on civil-military rela-
tions and Latin American politics and security. He is the author of Crafting
Civilian Control of the Military in Venezuela: A Comparative Perspective (Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 2005) and coeditor (with Anne Clunan)
of Ungoverned Spaces: Alternatives to Governance in an Age of Softened Sover-
eignty (Stanford University Press, 2010).
Milan Vaishnav is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Sci-
ence at Columbia University. His dissertation examines the connections
P5331.indb 280 10/15/10 1:54:20 PM

NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS 281
between criminality, money, and electoral performance in India. His other

research interests include dynamics of pork-barrel distribution, political
corruption, and new left governments in Latin America.
William F. Vásquez is assistant professor of economics at Fairfield Univer-
sity. He received his doctorate from the University of New Mexico. He has
worked as a consultant for several international institutions such as the
International Food Policy Research Institute, the Central American Insti-
tute of Fiscal Studies, the UN Development Programme, and the UN Eco-
nomic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean. His most recent
research includes child labor, wage discrimination, and the provision of
public services (e.g., water, sanitation, education, agricultural services) in
Latin America.
Jeffery R. Webber is assistant professor of political science at the Univer-
sity of Regina, Canada. He has three forthcoming books: Red October: Left-
Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (forthcoming 2010); From Rebellion to
Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation and the Politics of Evo
Morales (forthcoming 2010); and The Resurgence of Latin American Radical-
ism: Between Cracks in the Empire and an Izquierda Permitida (forthcoming
2010), coedited with Barry Carr.
Hirotoshi Yoshioka is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology and Mellon Fel-
low in Latin American sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His
research topics include demography, ethnic relations, and international
migration. He is also interested in quantitative methodology, especially
applied Bayesian statistics, nonlinear multivariate decomposition, and
agent-based complex adaptive systems approach. Currently, he is writing
a dissertation in which he explores the effect of international migration
on ethnic relations, inequalities, and the image of indigenous groups in
Guatemala and Nicaragua.
P5331.indb 281 10/15/10 1:54:20 PM

LATIN AMERICAN RESEARCH REVIEW
Volume 46 Number 1, 2010
patients of the state: an ethnographic account of poor people’s

waiting
Javier Auyero
hiv/aids and sexual minorities in mexico: a globalized struggle for
the protection of human rights
Antonio Torres-Ruiz
social policy and vote in brazil: bolsa familia and the shifts in
lula’s electoral base
Simone R Bohn
forró’s wars of maneuver and position: popular northeastern
music, critical regionalism, and a culture of migration
Jack Draper
¿qué es racismo?: awareness of racism and discrimination in
ecuador
Scott H. Beck
gringo iracundo: roque dalton and his father
Roger Atwood
the unevenness of semocracy at the sub-national level: provincial
closed games in argentina
Jacqueline Behrend
presencia de movimientos chiítas en américa latina: su relacion
con los atentados de buenos aires (1992, 1994) y con el eje caracas-
teheran
Teherán Isaac Caro
back to the forest: exploring forest transitions in candelaria
loxicha, mexico
Mariel Aguilar-Støen
P5331.indb 282 10/15/10 1:54:20 PM

Latin American Studies from Chicago
Puerto Rican Citizen
History and Political Identity in Twentieth-
Century New York City
Lorrin Thomas
“Engaging the history of the Puerto Rican diaspora, as
well as the literature of race, imperialism, and national
citizenship, Thomas lays the groundwork for a much-
needed reconsideration of the significance of Puerto
Ricans in the social history of the United States.”
—David Gutierrez, University of California, San Diego
Cloth $40.00
Fighting Like a Community

Andean Civil Society in an Era of Indian
Uprisings
Rudi Colloredo-Mansfeld
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and makes it a joy to read. Colloredo-Mansfeld
presents a provocative take on indigenous activism,
the moral complexity of communities and civil
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experienced and challenged by Andean peoples.”
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A Mother’s Cry Terrorizing Women

A Memoir of Politics, Prison, and Torture Feminicide in the Americas
under the Brazilian Military Dictatorship ROSA -LINDA FREGOSO A ND
LINA PENNA SATTAMINI CYNTHIA BEJAR ANO, ED I T O R S
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Violent Democracies in Latin America

ENRIQUE DESMOND ARIAS A ND
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Transatlantic Fascism
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Power and Tradition in Candomblé in Argentina and Italy, 1919-1945
STEFANIA C APONE FEDERICO FINCHEL STEIN
336 pages, 36 b&w photographs, paper, $23.95 344 pages, paper, $24.95
Mama Africa Bridging National Borders

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Sexual Rights Movements in Emerging Democracies
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P5331.indb 285 10/15/10 1:54:25 PM

Latin American and
DREAMLAND
The Way Out of Juárez
Words by Charles Bowden
Drawings by Alice Leora Briggs
This striking work of graphic journalism pairs previously
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a vignette of daily life in Juárez, Mexico, in all its surreal
brutality and beauty.
152 b&w drawings, $19.95 paperback, $40.00 hardcover
QUIXOTE’S SOLDIERS
A Local History of the Chicano Movement, 1966–1981
By David Montejano
David Montejano, one of the foremost scholars in
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movement that provided models for organizing that
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ARCHITECTURE AS REVOLUTION
Episodes in the History of Modern Mexico
By Luis E. Carranza
Foreword by Jorge Francisco Liernur
The period following the Mexican Revolution was
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129 b& w photos, $60.00 hardcover
A BEAUTY THAT HURTS

Life and Death in Guatemala
Second Revised Edition
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The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies
26 b&w photos, 1 map, $24.95 paperback
P5331.indb 286 10/15/10 1:54:26 PM

Latina/o Studies FROM TEXAS
BROADCASTING THE CIVIL WAR IN EL SALVADOR
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the man who directed the main news outlet for the
guerrilla organization that challenged the Salvadoran
government.
Translations from Latin America Series
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University of Texas at Austin
39 b&w photos, 2 maps, $55.00 hardcover
MEXICAN WOMEN AND THE

OTHER SIDE OF IMMIGRATION
Engendering Transnational Ties
By Luz María Gordillo
Mexican Women and the Other Side of Immigration is
a fascinating study of the transnational experiences
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THE LITERATURES OF THE U.S.-MEXICAN WAR

Narrative, Time, and Identity
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The Literatures of the U.S.-Mexican War is a comparative
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PERFORMING MEXICANIDAD
Vendidas y Cabareteras on the Transnational Stage
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Performing Mexicanidad is an examination of the
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P5331.indb 291 10/15/10 1:54:29 PM

The Politics of In the Name of Reorganizing
National Capitalism Reason Popular Politics
Peronism and the Argentine Technocrats and Politics Participation and the New
Bourgeoisie, 1946–1976 in Chile Interest Regime in Latin
James P. Brennan and Patricio Silva America
Marcelo Rougier Edited by Ruth Berins
“In the Name of Reason brilliantly
Collier and Samuel Handlin
“The book provides a timely revi- shakes up the pejorative conven-
sion of a period that, although tional wisdom regarding tech- “Collier and Handlin and their col-
once much studied, has been nocracy and democracy. Patricio laborators draw upon a wealth
neglected in recent years. It Silva links the problem of tech- of cross-national survey data
also offers insights into con- nocracy to the larger question to identify the new patterns of
temporary post–Second World of the role of the middle class grassroots participation and civic
War industrialization projects in Latin American politics and association that have emerged in
essayed elsewhere in Latin socioeconomic development. major urban centers, often in the
America and formulates a dis- Largely of middle-class origins, void left by the decline of historic
tinct framework—the new busi- technocrats may make a positive labor-based party and union
ness history—that is relevant contribution by offering their organizations. . . . Anyone who
for the analysis of peripheral political masters a buffer from wants to understand how the
capitalist classes elsewhere political pressures in the policy social bases of political repre-
in a rapidly globalizing world process, thereby contributing sentation have been transformed
economy.” —Colin M. Lewis, to political stability and state- in Latin America’s neoliberal era
London School of Economics building.” —Eduardo Silva, should start with this book.”
and Political Science University of Missouri, St. Louis —Kenneth M. Roberts,
248 pages | $60.00 cloth 272 pages | $65.00 cloth Cornell University
408 pages | $30.00 paper
penn state press

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P5331.indb 292 10/15/10 1:54:32 PM

Harnessing Reactions to the Neoliberalism,
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policies toward foreign direct classic framework to contem- “Manzetti’s emphasis on the value
investment in order to harness porary cases, Enríquez develops of democratic political processes
the forces of globalization to a matrix of market reform is a welcome corrective to the
the structural transformation of strategies with starkly different notion that unfettered markets
their own economies. Professor implications for small rural pro- are wholly self-regulating or
Nelson’s book is a ‘must-read’ ducers. Combining theoretical amount to a kind of private
for policymakers and academics rigor with careful fieldwork, this substitute for governance.
interested in this process and in study draws on original survey Carefully chosen, detailed case
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derived from the experiences of analysis of Cuba and Nicaragua, broader arguments and show the
Costa Rica, Brazil, Chile, Ireland, examined in comparison to necessity of understanding how
and Singapore.” Russia’s ‘shock therapy’ and politics and liberalized markets
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P5331.indb 293 10/15/10 1:54:32 PM

New from Stanford University Press
Chimalpahin’s Brazil’s Steel City
Conquest Developmentalism,
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P5331.indb 294 10/15/10 1:54:33 PM

IMMIGRATION, POLITICS, & HISTORY
A Jumble of Needs Posthegemony

Womenʼs Activism and Neoliberalism Political Theory and Latin America
in the Colonias of the Southwest Jon Beasley-Murray
Rebecca Dolhinow Posthegemony is an investigation into
A Jumble of Needs examines the leader- the origins, limits, and possibilities for
ship of Mexican women immigrants in contemporary politics and political
three colonias in New Mexico, document- analysis. Jon Beasley-Murray grounds his
ing the role of NGOs in shaping womenʼs theoretical discussion with accounts of his-
activism in these communities. torical movements in Latin America, from
Columbus to Chávez, and from Argentine
$25.00 paper · $75.00 cloth · 256 pages Peronism to Peruʼs Sendero Luminoso.
$25.00 paper · $75.00 cloth · 376 pages
Breaks in the Chain
What Immigrant Workers Can Teach A Black Soldierʼs Story
America about Democracy The Narrative of Ricardo Batrell and
Paul Apostolidis the Cuban War of Independence
Breaks in the Chain shows how immigrant Ricardo Batrell
workers both reinforce and contest a tacit Edited by Mark A. Sanders
but lethal form of biopolitics that differ-
A Black Soldierʼs Story is the powerful
entiates the life chances of racial groups.
memoir of Ricardo Batrell, an illiterate,
Examining their personal narratives, Paul
fifteen-year-old Afro-Cuban field hand
Apostolidis recasts our understanding of
who joined the rebel army fighting for
the ways immigrants construct and trans-
Cubaʼs independence in 1896.
form social power.
University of Minnesota Press

WWWUPRESSUMNEDUs
P5331.indb 295 10/15/10 1:54:33 PM

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L AT I N A M E R I C A N R E S E A RC H R E V I E W

volume 45 number 3 2010

research reports and notes

P5331.indb 1 10/15/10 1:52:56 PM

Editorial and production services for LARR are

For information about the Latin American

P5331.indb 2 10/15/10 1:52:57 PM

On behalf of Latin American Research Review’s Editorial Committee and

P5331.indb 3 10/15/10 1:52:57 PM

P5331.indb 4 10/15/10 1:52:57 PM

Throughout the world, hundreds of languages that are known to exist

P5331.indb 5 10/15/10 1:52:58 PM

Mexico and Guatemala actively recognize indigenous cultural rights.

INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USAGE AS A METHOD OF

It is difficult to determine the number of indigenous people with any

P5331.indb 6 10/15/10 1:52:58 PM

of counting indigenous people (Ramirez 2006). The methods of counting

P5331.indb 7 10/15/10 1:52:58 PM

Indeed, in many parts of Latin America, including Mexico, where the

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND LANGUAGES IN MEXICO AND GUATEMALA

According to the 2000 Mexican census, 7.13 percent of Mexico’s popula-

P5331.indb 8 10/15/10 1:52:58 PM

1. However, the accords, including the idea of either officialization or co-officialization of

P5331.indb 9 10/15/10 1:52:59 PM

NEOLIBERAL MULTICULTURALISM AND INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USAGE

One reason many indigenous people have maintained their languages

P5331.indb 10 10/15/10 1:52:59 PM

has often resulted in the internalization of negative images attached to in-

P5331.indb 11 10/15/10 1:52:59 PM

Without resolving fundamental social problems and rectifying past

DATA AND METHODS

To examine indigenous language usage patterns in Mexico and Gua-

P5331.indb 12 10/15/10 1:53:00 PM

P5331.indb 13 10/15/10 1:53:00 PM

A major limitation of this study is that, although I argue that we must

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speakers if there is a negative correlation between socioeconomic status

INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE USAGE AMONG SELF -IDENTIFIED

Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for Mexican and Guatemalan

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Table 2 presents the results from multinomial logistic regression mod-

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Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

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INDIGENOUS LANGUAGE SPEAKERS AND THEIR CHILDREN’S LANGUAGE USAGE

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This is in part because, though about 92 percent of heads of children’s

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Model 1 Model 2 Model 1 Model 2

Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous Indigenous

*p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001

languages than it is among bilingual children. Similarly, the asset index

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The current study has examined statistical correlations between vari-

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ing in urban areas, with a higher socioeconomic status, are significantly

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of mestizaje and assimilation in the case of Mexico and Guatemala—it can

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p < 0.05; p < 0.01; p < 0.001

p < 0.05; p < 0.01; p < 0.001